Being a kind of 'what I've been up to' post:
Avid readers of this blog (that'll be me, pretty much) might be wondering what, exactly, I've been doing these past couple of years. There was a book, then another one seemed to be reaching some kind of readiness, then - nothing.
The answer, as so often in life, is that there has been no one thing which has pushed me off schedule; life just got in the way - any writer will recognise that. Since last we met (barring a couple of posts down there which I've imported from my Tumblr pages), Shore Leave seemed to be more or less done, so why, you may ask, hasn't it emerged into the world? Well, it's a little complicated.
Shore Leave update:
It's done, and I'm almost happy with it. The trouble is, there's a lot of meaning packed into that 'almost'. A couple of years ago, I had the marvellous Bryan Tomasovich do a developmental edit on it, and he was enormously helpful, pointing out the areas where work was needed, (and being encouragingly kind about the rest of it) - I thought about it for a while, and then several things happened at once: we moved from Prince George to Victoria, there were all the usual things which go along with that process - new house, new job, new school for Conor, and the book sat on the back burner for a bit.
There are those who, on reading that, will exclaim that I should have just got on with it any way, but there was another problem.
The more I thought about Shore Leave and Bryan's comments, the more I realised that it needed a more substantial rewrite than at first appeared. This would mean effectively a second complete ground-up reconstruction, as the key weakness is that a minor character needs to become much more the antagonist of the story - this will work, it will make it all stronger, and 'll be happy about it when it's done, it's just that...
It's just that, having lived in my head for so long, I had no more mental energy to give another reworking of the story. It will rise again, and be better for this process, but as a way of easing me back into writing, it's a non-starter.
So, what now?
I have played about with the website (you might have noticed); in doing so, I hit upon the idea of refreshing the 50 Musical Memories to make them more interactive (and to fix many of the broken links), so I'm doing that, and I'm working on importing another two music-based projects which I've posted in other places over the years (I looked at 'Rediscovering Rush' yesterday, it's about 60,000 words as it stands; it'll take a while) - both of those will get rewrites as I go, and will appear on here as categories for those who are interested.
What about writing books?
I'm doing that, too. While Shore Leave sits there maturing, I'm actively writing two other stories, tentatively entitled A Little Bird Told Me and The Tip Run - both have a plot, a structure, and some substantive writing behind them; the former is taking shape more quickly than the latter; I'll be focusing on them just as soon as I get all the other stuff tidied away.
There's also a vague idea forming which looks like it might have a bit more of a science fiction concept; it's a great concept, but I can't fit a story into it just yet. I'll get there, though.
So, I'm not being idle; I am suffering a little from the whole 'too many things to choose from' problem, but I'm getting there. I'm setting myself a target of posting in here at least once a week - but I've said that before...