yes, we're still alive

As you may have noticed, Steel Rising kind of went away for a while. There are many reasons for this and I'm going to explain a few of them.

The first and probably biggest is that I (Brad HP) started a new job just before the begining of Small Press Idol round 3. I was away from home in training for 11 weeks and didn't have a whole lot of free time, and pretty often didn't have a great internet connection (especially in the crap-hole hotel where I spent 4 weeks in DC).

The next big reason is the disappointment and frustration of not advancing past round 3 of Idol. It was pretty crushing. The entire team put in a lot of time and hard work, and it seemed like nothing we did could get our voting numbers up to advance us into the final round. Then there was the numbers scandal (where it appeared that other projects may have had inflated votes from fake accounts) and all of this piled up and just made me want to put this whole project down and step away for a while.

So I did.

I've tried to come back to it and work on it a few times over the last few months, and seemed to find myself with a Steel Rising specific writers block. I stared at the script pages for hours and couldn't add more than a few words at a time to them. I wanted to work on it but part of me must not have wanted to work on it because I couldn't work on it.

But then I discovered that I couldn't really get work done on anything else either, because I felt like I needed to get back and finish up that SR script first. Then I was really stuck. So I said screw it. I started catching up TV, started playing more video games, reading more.

And then the magic happened, and all of these other things started inspiring new story ideas and made me want to write again.

So I did.

But it wasn't Steel Rising, it was something completely different and new. And even though I'm very excited about working on that one, it doesn't have a whole lot more to do with this story except that it started me writing again and by starting writing again I started looking for ways to get this new project the exposure that it needs.

And through that I started talking to some very talented people who have some very awesome ideas. And this talking led to my renewed desire to start working on Steel Rising again, and some very good plans to get the book the exposure it needs.

I don't have much else I can say about it right now except that it is coming back. There is a plan and it is a good one. Like I said, these are some very talented guys I've been talking to. It's going to take a while because there are some SR issues I need to work through before we put these other plans in motion.

But Steel Rising is still alive. More info coming soon.