You may have been wondering why I haven’t posted in about a week. Well, it’s because the Web site is screwed up again — at least on my end.

For some reason, whenever I pull up the site/blog, my frame/header is gone, and I keep getting a weird virus message.

I don’t think there is a virus on the site, since some other folks I know say that it looks fine on their end. But I can’t be sure.

I have no idea why it’s messed up on my end (and on some of my friends’ computers). Grr …

Anyway, my Web site guy is working to get this fixed. Once that happens, we should be back to our regular blog schedule. Fingers crossed anyway … Sigh …

So I did something kind of cool Saturday — I got to hear Nicholas Sparks speak. Sparks is the mega-popular author of books like The Notebook and Message in a Bottle (both of which have been made into movies).

One of my local libraries has an endowment to bring authors/speakers to the area, and he was their big draw this year. An interesting note: the library paid him $25,000 to come in, go to a luncheon, and do a talk at one of the local arts venues — all of which added up to about 4 or 5 hours’ worth of his time. Nice work if you can get it.

Sparks was very personable and told a lot of funny stories about his kids and his dog. He also gave some insight as to how he came up with the idea for The Notebook and his other books. Many were family stories or tragedies.

For example, his wife’s grandparents and their love story was the inspiration for The Notebook. His dad finally learning to love again after his mom’s death and his dad then dying in a car accident was the inspiration for Message in a Bottle.

Overall, Sparks was a good speaker with a lot of interesting antecedotes. Next year, I hope the library brings in someone just as well-known and entertaining. I’d love to hear John Grisham speak or Lisa Kleypas or a dozen other authors …

So far, I have got the Home, Bio, Books, and Appearances pages put back the way they were before the hack. The only thing not up on those pages are the excerpts/first chapters for the books. I hope to get around to posting those this week or next …

So one of the things I plan to do over the summer is tweak my Web site. Add a page for the Elemental Assassin series, reorganize some things, etc. (After, of course, I put it back the way it was before the hack).

I’m also wondering if I want to do a complete redesign. As much as I love my current design, I don’t know that it says urban fantasy, which is what I’m writing now. And I’m thinking about getting some extra art done (runes mostly) to go with the Elemental Assassin series, and I don’t know how well it would mesh with my current graphics.

What do you guys think? New design or stick with the old?

So Wheezley and I have actually been to the movies a couple of times already this summer. Here’s what we’ve seen so far:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Just average. The story was okay, but I don’t know, it just didn’t have the spark that some of the other X-Men movies have had. That being said, there was a lot of man candy to look at (I had no idea Ryan Reynolds was so buff!), and I did like the fight scene with Wolverine and Gambit (Taylor Kitsch from Friday Night Lights).

But I didn’t really care about the love interest or the whole Sabretooth-brother plot. And, as Wheezley pointed out, there were a few too many scenes of Hugh Jackman screaming at the heavens. And the CGI at the end wasn’t that great. (Was that really Patrick Stewart?) Overall, just meh.

Star Trek: It totally rocked. I’ve never seen a single episode of the TV series or any of the movies, so I’m not really a Trekkie at all. But I thought the movie was excellent. It was a really well-done origin story that had a lot of things in there for the fans and non-fans alike (I loved Bones chasing Kirk around the ship and giving him shot after shot).

The time-travel storyline made my head hurt a little, but then again, it always does. It was nice seeing Zachary Quinto in a non-Sylar role, and Chris Pine did an excellent job as Kirk. Overall, it was everything a summer movie should be — smart and fun with some cool effects.

Terminator Salvation: It sucked. I didn’t have high hopes for it, but it was just not good. I think one of the main problems was just the lack of any kind of humor or lightness whatsoever. That’s what made T2 and T3 so entertaining. Yeah, the world was ending, but Arnold still had some funny lines along the way. T4 was just … depressing. And again, the time travel stuff made my head hurt.

And how many people have to die before folks realize that maybe getting into a car/plane/helicopter/whatever with Christian Bale will lead to their untimely demise? Just a thought. Everybody who got in any kind of moving vehicle with him ended up getting shot down or eaten by killer water robots.

So there you have it. My take of the summer movies so far. What about you guys? What movies have you enjoyed this summer? Share in the comments.

Well, the good news about the blog being down so long is that quite a bit of stuff has been happening with the Elemental Assassin series, which means I have some news to share.

The biggest is this — the books are now going to be published in mass market format. Huzzah!

I cannot tell you how excited I am about this move to mass market. Given the craptastic economy, the cheaper format will mean that the books are much more affordable for folks — $6.99 or $7.99 versus $14 or $15 for a trade paperback.

The release schedule is still the same — Assassin 1 in February, Assassin 2 in June, and Assassin 3 in October. Since the books are going to be released in the mass market format, they will actually hit shelves a week early, which means that Spider’s Bite, the first book in the Elemental Assassin series, will now be out on Jan. 26, 2010. Not that I’m counting down the days or anything …

Also, in the last month, I’ve done copy edits for Spider’s Bite, revisions on Assassin 2 (title still to be determined), and I’m getting revisions on Assassin 3 from my editor this week. So stuff is finally starting to happen on the production end of things.

Oh yeah, and I’ve started writing Assassin 4 too, just in case my publisher wants more books in the series (which I hope they do).

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on with me and my books. What have you guys been up to while we’ve been on forced hiatus? Share in the comments.

I’m back!

For those of you wondering were I’ve been, well, back around the first of May, my Web site got hacked. I did manage to do a blog post about that before the hack completely took the site down.

Anyway, my Web site guy put the site back up about two weeks later. I did some work on it — and then it got hacked again.

I kid you not. The very next freaking day.

Evidently, somebody out there either doesn’t like me or just enjoys trashing people’s sites. Because it was a pretty bad hack with lots of nasty, corrupt files everywhere. Anyway, it took my Web site guy a while to go back through and weed out all the bad files. (Thank you, Justin!)

The result of which is that now all the information on the site is about two years old. Sigh. I have a backup copy of the info from the last time I updated the site, but it’s going to take me a while to go back through and physically change and reformat all the pages again.

Anyway, thanks for your understanding and patience. Hopefully, the site will not get hacked again as I (slowly) restore all the old information. But if it does go down again, then that is why. And know that I am working to get it back up as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, we will return to our regularly scheduled blog posts. I’ve got a ton of books to review, and I’ve managed to see some of the summer blockbuster movies.

Oh yeah, and I’ve got some news on the Elemental Assassin books to share too.

I’m glad to be back!