Blogging

The Life of a Writer: An Update

/ Peter Martuneac / 5 Comments

Sometimes, it’s hard to remember that behind every social media presence, there’s a genuine person behind the screen on the other end, and it’s hard to truly connect with people if you don’t really know anything about them besides funny tweets or memes. So every once in a while I like to type up a blog post with some news about my personal life! Because I’m more than just a writer and reader, after all.

The first exciting news is that I have two job interviews upcoming this week, and both are tremendous opportunities for me! They’re both at the same company I work at now, but would be higher (and better paid) positions. I’m hoping to do well enough in the interviews to overcome my educational deficiencies (employers really hate seeing that political science and philosophy major on my resume, I guess).

We got all our Christmas shopping done early in my household, which is nice, and all the decorations are up as well. I never thought I’d be the guy who puts up Christmas trees before Thanksgiving but the beautiful wife and daughter tend to convince me otherwise. Ironically, the decorations that I generally enjoy having up, the outdoor lights on the roof, might not even make an appearance this year! By the time I thought about putting them up, Old Man Winter blew across the land and frankly I don’t want to spend ninety minutes on the roof with my fingers and face freezing.

If it warms up at all between now and December I’ll make a real effort to get up there! If not, I may just wait until next year (and set a calendar reminder).

I’ve also managed to lower my blood pressure a little, which is good. It was never terrible, but at my last doctor’s visit this summer it was a little too high. My doctor told me to cut down on sodium, which I did. I never had any idea just how much sodium was in the food I was eating! Way too much! It was actually pretty easy to cut out the worst offenders (frozen food, an everything bagel every morning, Campbell’s soup on the weekends) and make some low-sodium substitutions elsewhere.

When I checked my blood pressure last week, it was 128/88, down from 130/90. Hopefully, the way I’m trending, I can get it down to 122/81 by my next annual check-up. That’s really the only unhealthy thing about me since I don’t smoke, I exercise four times a week, and only have one drink once or twice a month, at most.

Last of all, a writing update, because I am still a writer! I just finished a second draft of the third Ethan Chase book: Gold of the Jaguar. I’m really happy with how this one turned out, and while I was editing, I actually got a little choked up at a particularly emotional scene. I’m hoping to have that sent off to my editor to get it in the process of publishing very soon!

If you’ve read the first two Ethan Chase thrillers, thank you! I truly appreciate your support. If you’ve enjoyed them, please do leave a rating on Amazon or the site where you got the books. Next to actually purchasing an author’s work, talking about it online is the next most helpful thing you can do to support authors!

And if you haven’t read them yet, well, you can check them out here!

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September Wrap-Up

/ Peter Martuneac / 3 Comments

As the release day for Mandate of Heaven inches closer, I managed to have an extremely productive month of writing! I set a goal to add 10,000 words to my current work-in-progress (Book 3 of the Ethan Chase series, Gold of the Jaguar) by month’s end, but I ended up adding 20,000 words as of this weekend. That brings the manuscript to just over 50,000 words and near the end. Just this morning I was able to finish a chapter that puts Ethan and company into place for the exciting, climactic scenes.

I also had the pleasure of being interviewed by fellow blogger and author Berthold Gambrel! He will be releasing that interview on October 10th, the same day that Mandate of Heaven drops, and I’ll be sure to share it here and on Twitter, as well.

They say that writers have to be readers, and I’ve been doing my best to live up to that standard this month! I finished reading George W. Bush’s presidential memoirs, as well as a biography on Dwight D. Eisenhower (I’ll review that one later this week), and I’m about a quarter of the way through the audiobook version of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs. Also, this weekend I picked up a two-book collection of arguments about the US Constitution and the Constitutional Convention that my brother gave me, and that has been fascinating to read!

Well, fascinating to me, anyway. My wife and children roll their eyes when I open that dusty, boring tome.

As always, thank you all for being loyal readers of this blog and my works! It’s officially one week until Mandate of Heaven is released and I’m brimming with excitement about it! It’s one of my best works to date, and I think you all will find it easy to fall in love with these new characters.

What’s Cooking? Nothing at All.

/ Peter Martuneac / 5 Comments

They say that trouble comes in 3’s, and I sure hope that’s true because that’s how many major appliances I’ve had to replace in my kitchen in the last 15 months and I really don’t want anything else to break. First it was the fridge, which, to be fair, wasn’t exactly a need, but we’d been planning on getting a new fridge for a while. But then the dishwasher broke just a few months ago, so we had to get a new one.

And just this weekend, the oven stopped working too, so we’ve now ordered a new oven as well. And on my daughter’s birthday when we still had a cake to bake, the timing couldn’t have been worse! I probably could have fixed it with a new igniter, but the replacement part would have cost $100 and Lowe’s was running a big sale that ends on the 3rd, plus we were planning on updating the oven with next year’s tax return anyway, so I figured might as well do it now.

But seriously, this better be the last big appliance I buy for a very long time!

Replacing or fixing broken things is one of the worst parts of home ownership. Back when I was single and living in my 1-bedroom apartment, it was a simple matter of calling the landlord, who would send a repair guy out usually that same day and it didn’t cost me a dime. That was the nice part of renting, even if almost everything else about renting stinks.

But for some good news (not really sure if it’s good news. Maybe… gratifying news?), as I wrote this blog post I noticed that someone overnight had read the entirety of Her Name Was Abby overnight on Kindle Unlimited! So thank you, whoever you are, for apparently really enjoying my story, and I hope you read Books 1 and 3 next!

If you’re reading this and you haven’t taken a look at Her Name Was Abby yet, you can check it out here. Read some reviews, see if it’s the right book for you on this fine August day!

New Blog, Same Author!

/ Peter Martuneac / 6 Comments

Welcome to my shiny new blog! If you’re a new follower, then first let me thank you for clicking and reading what I have to say. I’m an author (you can check out my Amazon page here) and this blog is where I talk about my books, other books, and the art of writing in general.

If you came here from my old blog, then thank you for making the switch! With this new blog I have a bit more control of things, including the domain name, so that’s nice. I also have a new option for email subscription and signing up for that would be much appreciated! Of course I won’t bombard you with emails, no need to worry about that.

Sorry that I haven’t been blogging much lately, there’s just been a lot going on both professionally and personally. Plus I started another work-in-progress, and I’m up to six thousand words on that! Here I’ll try to keep the same blogging schedule as before: one post a week, usually Monday morning at 8:30 EST.

That’s all for today, and for this first post on my new blog! As always, thank you for reading!