So I’m now two for two on this monthly updates thing. I hope this is a trend that will continue, but we’ll see how we go. It’s not an unreservedly excited update this time; there’s a few things that I’ve been changing around that I wanted to keep people apprised of.
But I’ll take the exciting stuff first, to start with the high notes! Some of you who have been around know that I appear semi-regularly on Liberation Industries (currently on hiatus, but there’s plenty of backlog to check out). Well, at the moment, I’m working with Paddy on a big project (possibly two, but one confirmed). Watch this space for more details about that; it’s super exciting!
Second, I’m confirmed attending at Continuum Convention in Melbourne on the first weekend of June. If you wanna see me there, come say hi! I promise I’m friendly! I’ve also applied to get involved in some panels and things; a full list of Stuff I’m Doing will be available as soon as I know what’s going on. I’m super excited for a couple of the things I’ve put my hand up for, though, so expect lots of excitement when that comes through!
Third, I’m now entering the final stages of both The Ferryman’s Apprentice pt 2 and The King’s City part 1 being ready for publication – current plan is that by the time I start hitting conventions this year, they’ll be ready to go, but as always, watch this space for updates, and I’m not confirming publication dates until I can absolutely and 100% confirm them.
But now for the less exciting stuff.
First, off, the blog itself. I’ve not been updating the blog very often, except for these progress update type things. I’ve been intending for a while to start a more regular update schedule again – hoping to get back to weekly – but I’m still deciding where I want to take the blog. For a long time it was just general writing thoughts, but I think I’m starting to run out of content for that. Every time I sit down to write a post, I sort of end up writing the same thing over and over again. I’ll continue to write those sorts of things when something comes to me, but I don’t think I’ll be able to churn out a post like that on a weekly basis and keep things interesting. I’d like to do a few more projects like the Edit Pass Live – actually, I was thinking of picking that up again once I have a project that I’m actually editing (it fizzled on tKC because the thing ended up needing a full rewrite, not an edit). Are folks interested if I start talking about process stuff more? Would that be something that people would like to see on a monthly/twice-weekly basis? I might come up with some options for the blog direction, and run a poll. Patreon folks get first swipe, but I’ll post it on Twitter once they’ve had a chance to have a go.
And second, the writing side of things. As I’ve been talking about for a while, The Ferryman’s Apprentice is on its last season, and it’s a bit of an end of an era. But as I hinted at in a previous post, I don’t actually have anything lined up and ready to go right out of the gate. I was planning to, but things just didn’t turn out that way. I thought I’d decided on something, and I started to edit it up, but it’s just not feeling right. It’s not the story I want to be writing or telling right now. Now, I’m the sort of person who is generally pretty pro-business-side. I’m not the sort of person who needs to wait for inspiration, generally, and I believe in momentum over motivation. And I really didn’t want to have to go on a hiatus between stories. I thought I could just pick a story and write something that’s maybe a bit shorter than The Ferryman’s Apprentice was, then work on something that’s a bit more substantial while that was going up. I picked an old story that I’d written the first draft of and decided to edit it up and go for it. I really like that story, I love the characters and it’s based on a premise and concept that I’ve really, really been looking forward to exploring (because I’m a nerd like that). But I think it’s not the right story to be telling right now. It’s got a few ideas that I’d like to disentangle a bit from The Ferryman’s Apprentice and from The King’s City. The stories come from a very similar place, and I think that I need to come at this one from a new direction, which I’m not really able to do just now. Especially not if I tried to turn it around in a short time frame. I’ve also been working on very ‘realistic’ stories for a while – still fantasy, of course, but very grounded fantasy. I think I want to break from that for a while. I’ve been hankering to write something a bit weirder for a while, something that stretches a bit further out of ‘vaguely early-post-industrial historical fantasy’.
All of which is a very long-winded and excuse-filled way of saying that after The Ferryman’s Apprentice, I’m going on writing hiatus for a while. I’ll do another poll about what people might want to see in exchange – I might consider writing a few short stories or maybe even some three- or four-chapter stories just to get a little content up in between times. Again, I’ll be Patreon polling for that over the next week or so, and then Twitter-polling once Patreons have had their say.
Thanks for reading through all of this if you got that far. That’s what’s going on with me this month. Further updates and convention schedules to follow; I’m going to way more than just Continuum this year! Hope to see some of you at those cons!
As always, feel free to get in touch, here, or on Twitter. I do very occasionally check Facebook, and I need to start using it more often, but if you do need to get in contact with me you’re really better off with Twitter or here. I’ll get those polls sorted out, and then hopefully get some things organised!
Whimsy and Metaphor 