It’s been a rough month or so for getting words on the page. Some of it is just (waves a hand at everything) what’s going on in the world–especially in the US. Other parts of it relate to personal health (like putting off getting the last of my wisdom teeth being removed until they made it clear they were ready to leave). All of this jumbled together to rob me of about all drive to write. This wasn’t helped by The Thousand Doors essentially being analogous to The Empire Strikes Back, which makes it a less than uplifting book to be writing right now.
Now don’t get me wrong. It has its moments and there are POVs that I genuinely enjoy writing (Suvi is a character that grabbed my interest and continues to hold it). It’s just hard to write a book that leans into “life is a series of down endings” at the current point in time.
That being said, I’ve spent the last three days back at it. My brain woke me up at 5AM this morning screaming that I’d forgotten to add key details to the chapter I finished last night, so it appears it’s back on its productive bullshit. In addition to this, I got a short story written and submitted to a returning market along with writing the first few pages of a new project.
I intended the short story to be a palette cleanser to let me get back to TDD. Unfortunately given that it’s a Diamond Imperium adjacent story, it did not do so. I’m proud of it and think it’s a good piece of short fiction, but it didn’t kick my writing brain in the way I needed.
Enter into the picture what I’m currently calling Bad Things. At one point, I’d written the opening lines in my writing notebook in hopes that would hold off my desire to dive into it, especially given I’m in the middle of drafting another project currently. Given the blockade at returning to TTD, I sat down and turned my attention to Bad Things instead.
TTD, much like TSL, is a multi-POV story. Bad Things, however, is a direct first person POV a la The Amber Chronicles. It’s a modern fantasy dealing with a telepath/empath that uses his abilities in the gambling world, eventually running afoul of corrupt Fae and other far more unsavory characters who put him in a position of having to use his gifts in underground poker games to get himself out a jam. It swirls together a number of different things that have interested me over the years, not the least of which is poker in general. I expect this to be my sorbet while I continue working through the first draft of TTD.
Speaking of poker, I refinished my table. I originally bought this table close to 15 years ago, and it served me well. But as happens, the foam wore out and the felt needed to be replaced. This led to a trial of errors as I discovered how it had originally been designed that I may detail in a separate post another time. Regardless, I finished it, and it’s ready for me to start trying to win money sitting at it again. This also led to a complete shuffle of how I had my basement arranged so it would fit–especially since I have a massive three piece 5-shelf book shelf on one wall that wasn’t there the last time I had a game at my house.
I’m hoping the doldrums are done. The additions I need to make to last night’s chapter are still drumming in my head. I imagine I’ll get them added at lunch today before working on the next chapter tonight. I also have a couple of short stories I need to polish up a bit before I start sending them out into the world to collect rejections (to go with my growing pile of query rejections). Acceptances will come, though. I just have to get through the trenches first.
