Don’t mind me, just moving some things around. There’s now a page for short stories which, sadly, currently only has two. I’ll be posting more of those soon.

In personal news, I’ve quit smoking (after 22 long and smelly years) and have a new day job!

In writing news, I finished another short story. Unfortunately, it’s so good that I won’t be posting it on here, in the hopes that I’ll be getting it into a magazine. Gotta build up that street cred.

It’s currently cursed with not one name but two, in the same way that the other story I’ve posted on here ($100,000 Bullet or The Assassin, The Client, His Wife, and Her Lover) and it’s made me realise that I am terrible at naming stories. Even worse, I have a list of story titles that sound badass but I have no story to go with them!
Same goes with my own name — I can’t decide if I should be the friendly and approachable Matt Hampton, or the dignified professional Matthew J Hampton. Different vibes, same person.

The next Dirty Eyes novel, Son of the Spike, has been all plotted and is ready to be written. The scene-by-scene breakdown was nearly 12,000 words long, so that’s kind of my “draft zero” to know if the flow really works. I’ll be writing that into the new year, especially during my Christmas holiday in Germany. Words cannot express how much I’m looking forward to drinking Ur-Krostitzer in Dresden, on the bank of the Elba River, with my laptop in front of me.
I was also seized with the notion that I would write it as a short story first, but soon found that it just doesn’t scale down like that. Some ideas are for novels only, because they need a lot more structure to support them and explore what needs exploring, even if you cut out all the subplots and smoosh things together.

Lesson learned.