I also learned all the songs for the Iron Maiden tribute, Seventh Son, and have been keeping those in shape. We're really eager to get out there but just brought on a new guitarist you'll recognize - James Goetz, who played with my band. Now we have to give him time to get ready, so in a way on I'm break. I may work on a few more vocal band songs in the meantime.

Trying to get published also ate up two months this year. I suspect I have more work to do with that come June, too. The odd thing about this is that agents don't even judge your book so much as your pitch letter describing it (sometimes they don't even want any pages of it), and that's an art in of itself, one which I haven't perfected. The good part is you can just re-write the letter and try again.

I've been able to get more done this year due to not doing so much promotion anymore. It seems like a conflict - I can create more but am doing less to push those creations out to the world, so in a sense, what's the point? It makes me happy and more peaceful, and that's more important to me at this point. I've always been about creating it, nothing else associated with it like getting girls or something. I keep thinking I should just record stuff at home like I always do and push it to my site and leave it that. No more official releases or worrying about who and how many people are paying attention. I can't let myself do that yet, however, because I think I deserve to find more success - if I only knew how to find it. I think all I can really do is crank stuff out and hope I get lucky.

But seriously, doing these things as a hobby is much more rewarding. What's the reward of doing them as a "career"? I don't know. I haven't seen one that makes the career aspects worth the sacrifice of the time to create the art in the first place. What's a guy to do? The irony is having immediate distribution at my fingertips but feeling compelled, for the sake of ambition I suppose, to make something of what I do through official distribution methods instead of simply give it all away. Of course the other reason is that I hate working for a living, but only fiction can save me from that. Music never will.

Rand