Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

I have advanced along the road to publication. I’m getting my formatting down, maybe by the end of my next weekend off. I’m asking questions and getting useful answers, playing with rudimentary tools. I’m not trying to reinvent the formatting wheel here folks, something serviceable and stable will do.

Work has been insane, however. I think I underplayed it last week: it has been undeniably draining. I have a new plan and system this week, so we’ll see if that works and I have more energy come my next days off, fingers crossed!

I’ve been having fascinating time travel loop dreams involving superpowers and roundabouts and moons. As I dreamt I was saying to myself, “This never works, time travel and alternate timelines always get far too messy if it isn’t OG Star Trek, and I’m 10 and not paying too much attention to possible paradoxes!” (Maybe not all that, but you catch my drift.) Anyway, I kept the alternate timelines and sequences of events running in the dream to about three intersecting parallels until I realized I’d lost it. Probably at the moment my slowly waking mind wondered if I could remember enough of it to write down as maybe a ridiculous short story seed. I didn’t, I decided the mess that it became meant trying to recall the first two branches and loops wasn’t worth it. It melted away into vague dream images and no more. I think my suit was green. I got an upgrade in the first rerun through the primary timeline(which of course could no longer be the primary timeline if I was running through it again as an upgraded version of my earlier self – see? This kind of thing always dissolves into chaos) and it (my upgraded suit) was spectacular! Hahaha!

Why am I telling you this? Because I take dreaming as a sign of good health, and wish you an active dream life, as long as they aren’t too distressing. I have my share of those, but so far I’ve always managed to wake up. Also as a reminder to you to tell me never to try a time travel story unless it is completely diagrammed out, makes sense, and there is no chance of a sequel that destroys the first carefully crafted milieu.

And because I am going to have less time, (my new plan involves me working an extra day a week for the next 4 weeks), but hope to do more with it, which is something of a paradox in itself. I’m cautiously optimistic about it. Ask me on Friday how that works out!

I’ve done more learning about story building. I read The Crow special edition. Is it sacrilege to say I preferred the 1994 movie’s story? I feel it is. The artwork was gorgeous. I finished reading a book of Scottish folk tales. Five more to go. I was taking notes, have to go back and do more. I have no plans to “use” what I’m learning, at least not any time soon, and not in any kind of direct retelling/adaptation style: I’m just letting it enter my mental library, see what comes out in dreams and reverie. In Scots preferably, but I’ve let my studies there lapse terribly, which is a source of embarrassment.

I have also been restlessly creative in limited fashion, more ideas and some character studies for my short and sweet 40K story. I suspect it will be more like 60K at this rate. And a series opener. I just can’t help myself: once you imagine a setting and characters, and conflicts, especially layers of conflict, which this setting and story created effortlessly, it is very easy to see primary story A leading into bigger story B and then either on to option C or D or E, with other stories F and G lurking. This is all good, as it adds depth to the story A I have in front of me, gives it way more depth, more stuff I can work into each character that makes them live in that world and be part of it, rather than glyphs moving across a painted backdrop being frantically wound back and forth by sweaty stagehands. Even fast fictions should be grounded, methinks. And frankly, that’s just the way my brain works, and I have to accept it and work with rather than against it. Most of these ideas will end up on the figurative cutting room floor, but that they’ve been explored will make what remains that little bit better, I believe.

So there you have it folks. I leave you with this: any writing is better than none, and doing prep work that may never make into your next story isn’t a waste if it helps your world and characters connect more intimately, and your people move about there as concrete individuals. That’s the hope anyway!

Fair fortune to you all, wherever your road may take you.