Wrestling with Words and the World

Hello. It’s been a while.

I just re-read my last blog about getting back to work ‘soonish’. I wrote it over two months ago, and here I am, still seemingly stuck in neutral; at least as far as getting back to my writing is concerned.

I will admit the last few weeks have been difficult, as I am wrestling with my addiction to a

morning scroll of the news. It is ironic that someone, whose first published novel was an apocalyptic vision of the world, is now so impacted by global events that they form a very effective barrier to writing fiction. Perhaps my current state is best captured by the photo below.

So what to do?

Well, I’ve pivoted from the sequel to The Perfect Circus - Redux (though I still intend publishing sooner rather than later) to re-reading an adventure/humour novel I wrote with my good friend, Lou, back in the late 1980s. We did it as a bit of an exercise, as at the time Lou was writing short stories and I was focused on plays. I would write the first chapter; hand it over, and so we went. After about five chapters, we decided it was better than we had anticipated and we sat down to create a plot. Long story short, it ended up being traditionally published, its title being ‘The Seventh Year of the Manna Bird’, with its main character being Peter Kettle. It was/is a very light read, albeit given the time and era it was written, it is somewhat dated.

Having said all that, I wrote a sequel to it some time ago and on a whim, decided to print it out and give it a read. Well, ‘quelle surprise’ (I hope I have the right spelling for the French version of what a surprise), it turned out to be much better and entertaining then I remembered. It also brought back some very warm memories of a stay in a charming Italian town in the mountains, called Pigna.

This has created a dilemma. Do I pivot, albeit momentarily, and focus on re-introducing these two novels to the world, recognizing there is likely a very small market for both. Or do I accept the fact that self-publishing is difficult enough and I need to continue to work on and promote The Perfect Circus - Redux and its sequels? My decision is not helped by the knowledge that my writing career was negatively impacted when I kept switching genres some thirty-years ago.

I have yet to determine the path forward. I have enlisted two ‘beta’ readers to tackle the two

Kettle novels which I hope will help with my decision. Stay tuned.

A final note: Just writing this blog has helped ease the barriers to my writing. For the first time in a long time, I feel energized and ready to get back to work. To my readers and supporters - thank you!