It has been a minute since my last update.

The reasons for the silence are many. And each unto itself could have provided a major challenge to writing. Combined... well.

My bout with COVID and its treatment cycle resulted in health issues that became a distraction in our little corner of the world. That lead to a surgical procedure to correct the issue, only to exacerbate things further.  It is now being managed by medication, but it was a difficult few months.

Couple that, with the demands of my most recent consulting engagement -- originally projected to be three to four months -- concluding after fourteen months. You can see where my focus on writing might have slipped a little.

Then there were my struggles, when I could focus, with the next novel. As you know, if you read the preview at the end of Oaths and Odysseys, my intention was to take a break from the Windsor community and tell Ben's story from beginnings of the pandemic.

That particular plot bunny flitted through my mind when I was writing the first draft of Genesis Renewed in 2005. What if the story's protagonist was a college student, with limited life skills, in a small community in central Canada. With the pathogen's death rate he could find himself truly alone in the Canadian Plains. I brain-dumped some notes and stuck it in a file.

A fifteen-ish years later I dusted it off and it became a short story in a post-apocalyptic anthology published by Bayonet Books.

In the Fall of '23 I took an intro to screenwriting class. I dusted off my notes and the short story to expand to a longer work as the semester's project.

With a hundred-page screenplay as an outline in hand, I polished up the first few pages to attach as the teaser for Oath's release. In November '24 dove into Genesis Alone. 

Knocking out a novel, with all this material to work with...piece of cake... right?

Pffffft!

By February, I had thirty-thousand words. And in March I hit a wall. 

No matter how I tried to get around it, I couldn't get my head into crafting the story. Every sentence or paragraph was brutal. I spent hours moving comas around. In July, after four months of battling the wall, I decided the story needed to gestate a while, and I slipped it in a folder to ferment.

In August, I picked up the story of Dave Sharp and the Windsor community. And though progress has been slow, I am making progress on what I'm calling The Gathering. Not quite ready to warm up the crystal ball and make a guess on a publishing date, I'm hoping, without a new engagement on the calendar, to have the first draft completed by the end of the year.

Two things of note. 

First, I haven't seen much news on this out in the mainstream, but among indie authors the change in Amazon/KDP's exclusivity agreement has been quite exciting. In short, they have changed their rules to allow KDP exclusive authors/publishers to release their ebooks to libraries. Previously this was seen as a violation of the agreement. I'll be exploring the mechanization needed to get my books out into libraries very soon.

Second, I've been part of an active group of volunteers working to revive the Santa Barbara Literary Journal as a Technical Advisor. Maryanne Knight has taken over the reins from Silver Web, and enlisted the support of several members of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference community to lighten her load. Our efforts have borne fruit and the first edition under Maryanne's leadership, Volume 12: Superposition dropped last week in paperback. Ebook for this volume, backed volumes, and an update to the website will follow soon. 

End of next week, I'll have a table at LA's Comic Con, at the LA Convention Center. They do an Artists Alley, a gathering of hundreds of artists and artisans with their wares available for attendees. I'll have copies of all three books available for sale and autographs. I'll also be doing a little giveaway to boost subscribership.From the same designer who did the claw bookmarks I give away at events, a bookcase shelf sized set. I'll do a random draw of all subscribers at the end of the month and pay packaging and shipping. I'm hoping they will resonate with the crowd a ComicCon draws. If you are attending LA's Comic Con, I'll be in Kentia Hall, just off the entrance to the left.

In November, I'll be attending Author Nation again (11/3-7). With that event, on November 7th, I'll be sharing a booth/table at Reader Nation, event at the end of the week, with Robert L. Slater author of the Deserted Lands Universe. This year the conference is doing their readers event next door to The Horseshoe at Paris, which should add a new bit of energy to the happenings.

 This month Theo's mugging for tummy scratches.

As always, if you have picts of your fur babies, please hit reply. I'm a big fan of critters in all forms.