Hello, everyone, and good morning, everyone.  It’s Thursday—it’s quite early in the morning, since I’m having a particularly noteworthy iteration of insomnia today—and so it’s time once again for my weekly blog post.  This is the first Thursday in May of 2022, which is mildly interesting, I guess.  It’s also Cinco de Mayo, so for those of you who celebrate that holiday:  Enjoy!

As those of you who pay attention to it will have noted, I posted the most recent part of Outlaw’s Mind here on Tuesday.  I hope those who are reading along steadily—if there are any such people—are enjoying it.  It’s a fairly dark tale, which is probably why I’ve had to keep stopping and starting it as I go along.  I like my main character, Timothy Outlaw, and I keep making crappy things happen to him, or at least having him experience crappy things.  So, I have to take a step back from time to time.  It’s strange that this story has such an effect on me, considering I’m the author; I don’t know what it might say about my own psychology, if anything, but it can be a bit frustrating.

On the other hand, The Dark Fairy and the Desperado—which is not entirely a light-hearted tale, either—is at least quite fanciful, it being a supernatural adventure across multiple universes, the main characters of which are an unerringly deadly gunman from the Old West of our world (or one very much like ours) and a very angry fairy from a completely different world, whose experiences with humans have filled her with an enduring wrath that earned her her sobriquet.  And, of course, they only meet because of the machinations of a wizard from yet another world who has become trapped in a universe of his own creation and needs help getting out of it.  So, while it’s heavier in some senses than Outlaw’s Mind—Omniversally heavy, one might say—it’s lighter in tone.

I’ve gotten quite a lot of writing done on it lately.  This is at least partly because I’ve been taking the train, and so I can write while I’m traveling to work.  Even though I didn’t accomplish anything at all last Friday, I’ve still written just shy of 8500 words since this time last week.  I haven’t even introduced the Dark Fairy yet, since it takes some time to bring a desperado out of the Old West into a trans-universal setting and explain to him what the heck is going on when it happens.  It helps that, at the time he is transported from his home, he is facing nearly certain death in the desert, without a horse and without water.  He figures almost anything would be preferable to that, so he’s able to go along with things.

Anyway, it’s a fun story, and one I’ve had in my mind for roughly as long as I had Mark Red.  Like Mark Red, it was originally thought up as a manga, and it’s now meant to be a series of books; I haven’t written any more of Mark’s story yet because, frankly, no one has expressed any interest.  I still may end up doing it, though—assuming I live that long—because Morgan, the vampire who saves Mark’s life by making him into a demi-vampire, is still my favorite character that I’ve written to date.  There are at least two more books waiting to be written about her and Mark.

The adventures of The Dark Fairy and the Desperado will probably take more books, because of the structure of the adventure they’re going to be having, but I don’t expect the books to be as long individually.  There will be more action and less soul-searching, so to speak, since neither of the main characters are teenagers, and in fact are quite hardened and cynical, each in his or her own way.  Neither one needs to try to avoid becoming a killer and/or a supernatural being, since it’s already too late to avoid such things.

They inhabit the same Omniverse as do the various characters in my other stories—after all, the Omniverse is infinite in infinite dimensions, and it contains all possible universes of any nature—but they will spend more time traveling from one realm to another than pretty much any of my other characters*.

And that’s pretty much a summary of everything that’s happening in my life or is likely to happen—I don’t really do anything for fun**, I don’t have any real friends***, I have no pets, no local family (none that want to see me, anyway), and no hobbies**.  I occasionally attempt to play guitar and sing, but that’s more my way of punishing the world, à la Welcome to the Machine.  I don’t know that it could be considered a worthwhile endeavor.

But I continue to write, both my books and this blog.  I hope you all enjoy reading it (and them, when and if it applies), and I hope you have a good holiday, if it is one for you, and that in general you have the best possible day, week, month, year, and life you can have, along with those you love and who love you.  And try to treat all the other people well, also, if you can.

Oh, and wish your mothers Happy Mother’s Day this coming Sunday, if you’re lucky enough still to be able to do so.  And to all you mothers**** out there—Happy (early) Mother’s Day from me!

TTFN

*With the possible exception of the eventual story Changeling in a Shadow World, which I’ve mentioned here previously.

**Other than writing, I guess.

***Does that surprise anyone at all?

****Rarely enough, for me, this is not intended as “half a word”.