28 March 2021

The Idle of March

Time is fleeting if I am to include a blog entry for March. This may be my last chance to pen a few words on something arguably trivial. Or it may serve to jab a blade into precisely that niche where it will do the most damage. Sort of wake you up. But that's March for you. Never know what you'll get.

So I looked at posts in March from past years of this blog. The way those posts have gone, I was well underway in new novels, vampire stories for the recent years. Before those years was an epic fantasy novel. Usually I would get the idea for a novel in the fall and dabble with it, working out the plot and doing research, so that by spring it had form and function. Then I would write fast and furiously through the summer and edit/revise during the fall. 

However, the great swath of sloth I experienced during this past year threw off that timetable. Because of the general malaise impacting the reading public, I delayed the launch of a new novel (EXCHANGE) from March (pre-spring break) to late May (pre-summer vacation). That shift threw off my next novel, which had been written years before, thankfully, but had been undergoing recent revision so that I believed it was finally ready. I put out YEAR OF THE TIGER in October, keyed to the time at the story's climax. 

Thus I did not get a new idea to play with for Christmas. What I did do, while working on the publication details of the other two previously mentioned books, was to work on finishing a novel I started in a National Novel Writing Month  competition a few years back. I've blogged about that process previously. What this all means, however, is that I have nothing ramping up for the coming summer rush. This new science fiction novel will come out by the start of summer, just in time for pool and beach (or cabin and motel) reading. More on this exciting new book next time.

Given these time-adjusting events, I mistook yesterday for Friday. I also mistook Friday for Saturday. Everything is mixed up now. March begins with Pi day, which I only acknowledge by helping myself to a reasonable slice of pie. Or three. Then comes St. Patrick's Day when I serve myself corned beef and cabbage. Then comes my school's spring break. No break this year. Many schools elected to skip the week off and eliminate a week at the end of the semester. The thinking is that it is better to not have students go away, pick up some infection, and return to campus with it.

But I digress.... As I've been working on edits and revision of my forthcoming sci-fi novel, titled THE MASTERS' RIDDLE (mind the apostrophe placement), I've gotten ideas here and there for other stories. So I open a file and jot them down. Barely three sentences for most of them. I note that I've now collected about a dozen during the past year. One of them may interest me enough to give it a go, and perhaps it will prove to be novelworthy. One never knows. That's the drawback of being only one. 

So here it is, a blog post at the end of March. Enough, I dare say, to qualify, yet short enough so as to not waste too much of one's time. While I wait patiently for book cover art, I shall wish you and yours a very merry April - which happens to be National Poetry Month, thus providing me with ample blog post fodder in the form of doggerel I shall dabble anew!


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