I’m starting to really enjoy these posts. A good portion of it comes from engaging with my readership, but I’d by lying if I said that I don’t enjoy messing around in canva to whip up something new for each post. It’s become incredibly fun to see what nonsense my brain cobbles together. This week, we have something at least half-way professional.
Boom. Shaka. Laka. I love it.
Let’s get the life updates out of the way first.
I started a new job last week!
Now, some of you who know me personally are aware of the shenanigans that happened with my last job and the reasoning behind me leaving. We’re NOT rehashing that in this post. In truth, it’s better left in the past. There are more important things in my life than dredging up old frustrations.
Regardless, I have a new day job. I fully plan to keep it separate from my writing life in an effort not to cross those streams. So, for now, and until otherwise stated, I shall refer to it only as the Day Job.
I have trepidations in saying that I really, really like it. It’s the first job that I have ever had that doesn’t spike my cortisol levels every morning that I wake up, let alone every night that I go to sleep. I don’t find myself worrying about what I need to cram into my free time now.
Refreshing isn’t the right word for it, but it’ll have to do for the time being. Regardless, just know that I am happy with the Day Job.
I tried something new over the weekend. A new bespoke mocktail bar opened up. Yes, I said mocktail. I don’t always swill whiskey, you know. Even with a proper drinking liver (I come by it through genetics), I can’t always treat that part of my body like it owes me rent and needs to pay up.
So, in celebration of the new Day Job, some friends and I tried this new mocktail bar. Come to find out, Kava is quite the interesting alcohol replacement. It also can affect the liver poorly if consumed in mass quantities. Who would have thought, right? But, hey, the purple drink I drank tasted like a cookie, and they had basque cheesecakes. What’s not to love?
As far as writing goes… well. I am not ashamed to admit that I am having to take a step back and reevaluate my capacity to produce words. Just a few weeks ago I was pumped, as I imagine most people are when they have a story get accepted and begin the process of being published. All I wanted to do was write, and write EVERYTHING that popped into my brain. As it turns out, I am not superman. Not to anyone’s surprise, really. I’m not entirely sure who I was trying to impress by making bold statements like, “I’ll finish all of these projects before the year is out!”
I learned my lesson.
Sometimes less is more. Especially when brain bandwidth is being consumed by multiple streams.
So, I am taking a step back from my excitement to study the room around me. Let my eyes adjust to the light, and all that. You gotta clear the room before entering it, after all.
What do I mean by that?
I’m setting more realistic standards for my writing production. Hell, I’m still new to this thing. I’ve got one short story in the works. I shouldn’t have expected to be able to tackle so much at once, but I did anyway.
Reality clicked in quickly, thank God. Otherwise I might have burned out, quick. That wouldn’t have been good at all.
So, I promised big thoughts earlier today. This is that part of the post when I share them. Brace for impact.
We need more weird stories. Stories like this…
I’ve met Tim in passing a couple of times at LibertyCon. It was criminal that I didn’t read his work before now. “A Murder of Knights” is a fantastic short story that served to introduce me to the high-strangeness of Sword & Planet style stories.
“A story in the vein of Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance, A Murder of Knights digs deeply in the rich traditions of Sword & Sorcery and Space Fantasy to produce a dark tale of eldritch horror and knightly honor, in a world so far in the future that humanity has forgotten itself.”
That paragraph, along with the dope-ass cover art, grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go until I had consumed the whole story, and then the story (and world) wouldn’t let me go after it was finished. I still feel like it was too damn short and that we need a full length novel. I want to know more about this strange setting and the knights who inhabit it. Not only that, but it got me to thinking about my own writing.
I’ve been stewing on something Fantasy related for years now. Story bits have been pulled out and added to the pot as I waited for the right ingredients to bring it all together into a workable idea. I’ve liked some of the iterations that have come along over the years, yet they always felt a little… lacking. Like something was off with the spices. It wasn’t just right to write, yet.
And then I read Murder of Knights and thought, “Maybe my story just isn’t weird enough yet.”
Hear me out, stories aren’t weird enough these days.
Back in the pulp era you had all kinds of strange concepts. Gene Wolf and Jack Vance, as mentioned earlier, wrote some kind of Sword & Sorcery with Space-ish themes. The Barsom stories were Sword & Planet. Even Moorcock wrote some stories of high weirdness. There was a level of expected strange back then that seems to have died out to be replaced by just… darkness.
I, for one, have decided to follow my Muse as it is leading me into the weird.
It feels right. It feels like me. And it feels like it’ll be fun, and that’s what matters.
Carpe Librum, y’all