Notes from the trenches

Hello, folks! Your friendly author here!

This blog has been a little quiet because I’ve been running around doing author events and dayjob stuff and generally not reading much or having many fun adventures to talk to you about. I am absolutely itchy to be wrapped up with my current grant, even though it has been wonderful and excellent, and moving on to some new creative projects. Perhaps I am the only one who gets a little excited when I see the end coming down the road and starts dreaming of what’s next, but I daresay at least some of you will find that relatable.

Marquee in Verse officially wraps up tomorrow. I’ll have a few days of getting the final reporting together afterwards. Then I am going to take a couple of weeks off to do some self-care. After that? Well, I have two novel drafts currently crying for my attention and two revisions I’d like to get through this year. Plus I’ve got more query batches to send out on TFK to give it the best chance it can have. Anyway, there’s a ton of things to do and I’m hopeful I’ll have some progress on something by the end of the year, even if that progress just looks like putting a story in the trunk and moving on to the next thing. Writing is an exceptionally slow process — I know there are folks out there who can crank out a book a year or more and also have a life. I’m not sure how they manage it, to be honest. For me, the words do come pretty steadily, and I work well under deadline. But I still need to be able to eat, sleep, and exercise outside of those exceptional moments because I’d like this meat puppet to work for a few more decades.

What else is going on? It’s spring. I haven’t made it on a real hike yet, but I’m hopeful for something in May. The garden is blooming and I’m trying to convince myself that the little bit of new planting I’ve done this fall and spring is enough in-fill for 2023 even though I desperately want to buy more plants. The cats are well. I think I am going to have most of a year’s worth of garlic to harvest this summer, which is exciting, and maybe some peaches if the gods are kind. I actually read a book this weekend!

So yes, things are good.

I hope some of you will make it to the film screening tomorrow! It’s going to be a blast.