MJRyder.net

Just to let you know, I shall be away from today (Friday) to Monday on family business up in the north of England. When I get back I hope to get down to some serious blogging, and maybe even a search bar update. We shall see...

I'm still not sure I'm sold on Twitter, and as I've been so lackluster in my updates of late, I feel it's about time I closed my twitter account and focussed on the superior social networking solution, Facebook, instead. As a writer, I feel Facebook is a far more useable, accessable medium for me to sell myself and communicate with others and as such I feel this is the social medium for me.

Expect Twitter links etc, to be removed from the site shortly.

To think I thought I was finished with LeNurb! A couple of days ago now I received a text message to inform me that the new incumbent Media Officer has gone missing (already!) and the Union are looking for writers for the first issue of the 2010-2011 academic year. Naturally I jumped at the chance. Regular readers will be a little disappointed to learn my latest offering for LeNurb isn't quite in the same vein as many of my previous efforts as I was asked to write a sort of 'retrospective' piece, which is naturally, not so comedic as my normal work for LeNurb. For those of you who are interested, my latest article will be available to view as of 6th September.

As regular visitors to my site will have gathered, I've been really bad with my blogging recently. I know it's not really a good excuse, but the honest fact of the matter is, I've been busy! I'm now up to just over 30k of typed manuscript for my new book, I've hand-written more manuscript to type up, I've been applying for jobs like it's nobody's business, and I've been hard at work building activity on new site CNC:EVO. Fingers crossed I hope to have some material for you all soon. Promise!

Just received a message from my cover illustrator - apparently he's made some significant progress with my cover illustration. It's now at the 'very nearly done' stage. This is a major boost to me, as if I'm honest, I've been getting a little bit down about it recently. Fingers crossed I might get the final copy by the end of the week / early next week time and I can finally get back in touch with the publishers. Hope they haven't forgotten about me!

Oh my goodness, just where does the time go eh? I can't believe it's August already!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently - I've been rather busy of late. First up, I've been working on The Darkest Hour. I'm nearing the 1/3 stage, and so far it's shaping up to be a fantastic book. I'm actually genuinely excited by it. I'm really looking forward to the editing stage and going back over it in more depth, but thus far it's definitely shaping up to be my best work to date. I'm also at present, while looking for a job, working part-time in a local charity book shop that's just opened up. Not the most exciting or challenging work in the world, but it's keeping me busy that's for sure! I'm also helping out at my local church.

If that's not enough, as always I seem to find myself embroiled in countless internet-related jobs of one sort or another. As I've mentioned previously, I'm now working as forum moderator on one of my many internet-related projects of the moment www.cncevo.info. It's a new community site for the Tiberian Sun gaming community, and is shaping up to be the best TS-related site there's been since... well as long as I can remember really. Most of yesterday (after my time at the Old Bank Book Shop) was taken up trying to spread the good news to CNC community sites, and working on the Wiki page. Annoyingly, wiki seem to have taken down my updates already :s

Things are then, as you can tell, rather hectic to say the least. And these are only the main things going on that I can list off the top of my head! Also busy working on my latest hobby project, reading (as always) and applying for countless jobs. I really do hope things come together for me soon. This is getting ridiculous...