It’s been a strange year for me. I keep saying that but it keeps being more true. My original plans for the year, as detailed here, got severely derailed due to all kinds of unexpected complications. Most notably, my wife’s difficult pregnancy and some terrible upheaval in my brother’s life.
I could go into all the things that fell by the wayside, but writing was the main thing. My output here has remained pretty consistent, though I’ve also put zero effort into growing my newsletter this year. There are about 2,500 of you and that’s a pretty nice number of readers.
But rather than publish a novel per month, I’ve scaled back quite a bit. This has had an interesting effect, though, on my writing and what will come next.
I like writing. I like writing a lot and I like throwing it out into the wilds for all of you. That’s why this newsletter exists. It’s also why I stopped paywalling any posts. Maybe I will again next year, but maybe I won’t. Who can say.
But I’ve also written very little fiction this year for the first time in quite a long while. The past few years have seen me writing at least a few books per year, but right now I have several halffinished novels that I really should buckle down and get to. One of them is a Mad Max style chase scene. There are challenges with making an entire novel a chase scene, but it’s also a fun book to write. Even so, it’s been slowgoing because my time and focus and so on have become quite scattered.
I’m hopeful that I’ll have that out before the end of the year, but who knows.
I’m trying not to rush things.
Which leads me to the next point of all this.
I’ve been rethinking what a book release really is to me. More than that, I’ve been thinking more about books as objects. I do like putting out books for you to have and to hold, but there are a lot of things I’m doing ineffectively. I know this. I release things without much build up or announcement, which also means that people simply miss hearing that the new book is out.
Marketing type people will tell you how many times you need to mention something for it to stick in a person’s mind and eventually lead them to buy it and that number is a lot higher than One.
And so I’ve been thinking about this.
But I’ve also been thinking more about the content inside the book. What do I want a book to read like? What do I want it to feel like?
And, of course, this leads to ballooning ambitions. Which is all well and good, but it also necessitates a different approach to putting the books out there.
And so I’m still thinking about all this. Still playing around with ideas. Still dealing with a difficult year where just about nothing has gone according to plan—such is life. It’s been a confining year, in some ways. I feel more constrained and restrained than I have in a long time, and with a new baby coming in early October, my time is still quite limited and will continue to be for at least the rest of this calendar year.
As for you lovely newsletter readers: you can continue to expect more of the same!
This place has become a lot more literary than I ever planned, with me publishing a lot of pieces about books. But I’m a bookish type, as you know, and I’m trying to convince a world to read Patricia Highsmith. I’m also running through Stephen King’s novels and enjoying them more than expected.
My essays on the Berserk manga will also continue, as will my career retrospective of Bo Burnham. I have a few other things percolating, though they’ve been percolating for months or years at this point. And some of these nonfiction topics will eventually see the light of day as physical books.
It’s possible the cadence of pieces may change. I’ve been considering switching to monthly, but we’ll see. Also, I will get back to my Book of the New Sun slow read. I meant to only take a month off and now it’s approaching two months. But let’s just start the Claw of the Conciliator next week.
Why not!
I’ve been writing poetry, which isn’t so unusual, but it’s something I largely moved away from over a decade ago. Real Old English style poems, which is horrifically out of fashion.
Chess has also become a minor obsession, but we’ll talk about that later, for I have much to say.
Anyway, I hope you’re all doing well. The third anniversary of this place approaches! I’ll have more to say about a great many things in the weeks and months ahead.
And, as always, thank you for being here.
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