Hello everyone, and welcome to another Thursday.  I hope you’re all doing and feeling well, and also that you’re doing and feeling good.  Here in the northern hemisphere, it’s now Spring!  For those most powerfully affected by the relative duration of the daylight (such as sufferers from seasonal affective disorder), there is ample reason for celebration of these next six months.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been moving steadily ahead with my audio blog on “Iterations of Zero”.  I just finished recording and editing another entry, which I’ll post later today, and which I’ll probably turn into a “video” and put on my YouTube channel by tomorrow at the latest.

I’m enjoying this process, which shouldn’t really surprise me…but it kinda does.  Obviously, I hope that people will listen to these posts and will occasionally find them thought-provoking, and that they’ll perhaps even respond.  But I think even if no one were ever to respond or react, it would still be good for me to get these posts out.  I don’t know if it’s just an odd form of talk therapy, or if it’s something else entirely.  But I do think that speaking one’s thoughts aloud tends to crystallize and clarify them, which is unquestionably beneficial.  Writing does this as well, and in an even more precise and orderly fashion, but that very precision and order makes it at times a greater burden and a more daunting task.  Thus, for the time being at least, I shall continue my experiment in audio blogs.

Of course, I will also continue to write my fiction, which is my oldest and greatest love (not counting love for specific people).

Speaking of fiction—as I was—my novella is coming along well.  Earlier this week I did have to take a day off from everything after I ate what I think was a bad egg roll and found my system rebelling.  It made its displeasure known by sabotaging certain essential services, including fuel intake and waste management.  After much negotiation, though, I think we’re finally approaching a settlement, and my writing has already resumed after only one day of full disruption.

On the editing front, I’m speeding up a bit.  That’s good, because editing Unanimity is no small task.  I haven’t yet done any tidying up of Free-Range Meat (yes, that’s the title of my latest short story), because I wanted to make some good headway on Unanimity first.  Still, before long I will rewrite/edit my short story, and it will soon be published.

The novella will take longer, of course, since I need to finish writing it and then edit it before it can be published.  I may also change its title before I’m done.  The working title, Safety Valve, is fine as far as it goes, but the aspect of the story to which it refers is becoming less prominent as the world of the story takes on greater depth and scope.  There’s much more to it than I expected when I started the story.  It may well tie in with other persons, places, and events in the universe(s) of my fiction, including a planned future work called Changeling in a Shadow World…which in turn will have at least a distant connection to The Chasm and the Collision, and farther back will link to my first completed novel, Ends of the Maelstrom…now lost, alas, to the whips and scorns of time.

Perhaps I’ll find it in my head again someday.

Come to think of it, this novella even bears a distant connection to my horror novel Vagabond, which is also (partially) lost, but which would be easier to reclaim.  We’ll have to see what happens with that.

Bottom line:  there’s so much to do and so little time.  It would all be quicker and easier if I were able truly to write full-time, but I need to make a living and cannot yet do so with my writing alone.

(Hint, hint)

In the meantime, I shall nevertheless continue to write, because it’s the only real reason I bother to make a living in the first place.  I do hope that you enjoy reading my work even a fraction as much as I enjoy writing it.  If so, I shall have done at least some good in the world.

TTFN