A New Year

Yesterday I finished reviewing copyedit changes on book 3, wrote my dedication and acknowledgments, and returned When the Goddess Wakes to St. Martin’s. I’ll see it again after it goes through proofreading, and then not again until I see advanced proofs. I’m pleased with it, and I think you’ll like it. It should be on bookstore shelves at some point this summer, and I’ll make sure to alert everyone when that’s about to happen.

It’s been a rough year for a lot of people, and I’m not going to bore you with too many details of the negative here, because I know so many who have suffered a great deal worse. Before it was clear to us here at the tower just how bad things might get with the virus it looked for a time that we’d have to relocate, but my wife found a wonderful new job here in town after having to leave her former position, and she was able to start work at the new place by the late autumn. So, we experienced several stressful months, but it has all worked out.

Puny Banner poses beside Hulk’s Car.

Through late spring and into summer I was kept extra busy with home improvement projects necessary should we have to put our beloved home on the market, and so I learned how to build a stone garden enclosure, sorting a whole bunch of different shaped stones and fitting them much like a giant lego project into a wide circle — similar except that there were no interlocking bits and no picture manual. Later in the year I used my rather rudimentary carpentry tools and extraordinarily rudimentary carpentry skill and actually built a new pasture gate. I’d never done either thing before, and I’m proud with how they both turned out.

Two of my favorite restaurants closed, and I know numerous people who’ve suffered setbacks and loss. Fortunately my immediate family is doing well; my wife loves her new job and my children are prospering. Both my wife and daughter are in medical fields and have thus qualified for immunization, and I am glad of that. I’m slated for immunization in just a couple of days myself.

I swore to myself I’d write more short stories last year, and I did — I have two new Dabir and Asim stories out circulating right now, and two Hanuvar stories, and that’s not counting one more of each that were already accepted for publication. I sat down and wrote the rough drafts of four more Hanuvar stories at the end of January and first week of February, something that wouldn’t have been possible without all those detailed outlines I had ready to go.

Now I’m shifting gears. My creative energy will be directed at drafting proposals for several new books/series, with sample chapters. While those are circulating, I’ll revise those Hanuvar tales, flesh out some more, and put in more time revising the outline for the third Dabir and Asim novel. That novel is coming more and more into shape, and the outline of the entire cycle of Hanuvar’s adventures is very clear now.

It will probably sound funny to say this, but I feel like I’ve only recently learned how to write properly. I still see plenty of room for improvement, so I’m not saying that I’ve “arrived,” just that I understand how better to accomplish what I want to do. I’ve written enough short stories now that I’ve got a pretty good idea about how to make them deliver what I want, and I’ve written enough novels now that I’ve got a better handle on how to get a book on track without stumbling quite so much. I see how I want my writing to improve and it has become a joyous process, one I look forward to every single day. I’m sure there were times when I was just as excited about my writing in the past, but I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed it so much at the same time I’ve had so much control of it, and that’s a really good feeling.

In Tales From the Magician’s Skull related news, we’ve entered our second full month of submissions, and the interns and I have been working our way through vast stacks of material. It’s always a delight to find something good, or something that could be great with polish, or someone to whom you can offer a word of encouragement. I wish I could have shown myself, years ago, some of the things I’ve figured out about writing via trial and error, and so I try to take time to do that in the rejections and feedback I give. So too do the interns.