All hail Friday’s arrival!
Another lovely night’s sleep was enjoyed last night, and as I prepare for the weekend that is nigh–Christmas is just next week! Less than a week! AIEEEE!–sorry about that, had a moment of absolute terror there for a moment. I wrote for a little while again last night, working my way through Chapter Three, and I am hopeful that tonight and tomorrow I’ll be able to get it finished and move on to Chapter Four.
A boy can dream at any rate, can’t he?
As I sit here in the lovely warmth radiating out of my space heater, drinking my coffee and looking out my windows into a somewhat gray yet sunshiny morning, slowly waking up and coming to full consciousness, I feel fairly content. With the end, not only of the year but the decade, coming up on rather quickly in the fast lane, it’s a time I suppose for reflection and planning for the next. It’s a bit much, really–2010 seems so long ago now–but since I so rarely look back and my memory is so sketchy these days, it’s going to take me awhile to process it all. I didn’t accomplish everything I intended to this past year; I didn’t attain the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. But that’s okay. I also didn’t plan on having to deal with depression and an inner-ear infection and insomnia for a large part of the year, either.
One of my co-workers said to me the other day, “Greg, you’re the happiest person I know. You just seem to have everything figured out”–which was an absolutely lovely compliment, even if completely inaccurate. It’s lovely to know that other people think that I have things figured out, and maybe to some degree I do, but I still go through life thinking for the most part I am a complete moron with few, if any, interpersonal skills. I certainly don’t know what I’m doing with my career. I bumble along, writing my books and stories and trying to get them out there to readers, but I don’t know how to build my audience or do any of those things that professional authors are supposed to do. I certainly don’t use this blog, or my social media, the ways authors should. And that’s okay, you know? I don’t have the time to do a lot of marketing, which is also okay becaue I wouldn’t know what to do or how to get started marketing my book, and with no offense intended to anyone, I certainly don’t need to pay a lot of money for seminars or webinars or buy books about marketing that I don’t have the time (or interest) to read.
I think Royal Street Reveillon is perhaps the best Scotty book I’ve written thus far, and that’s a very satisfying feeling. I ended the Chanse series because I was tired of writing him and I couldn’t think of another story for him–but now I am thinking that Murder in the Arts District was the right place to end the series. I’d like to do another Chanse novel, and I have the story idea already; it would be nice to write the definitive Chanse novel and end the series there. I do think this idea, even though it wouldn’t be set in New Orleans for the most part, is the place to end the series. So maybe–just maybe–I might try to get that story done in the next year or so, give Chanse a proper send-off, you know? Or am I just procrastinating, pushing back writing something more mainstream off into the indefinite future because I am afraid of failing?
Heavy thoughts for a Friday morning before work.
And on that note, I am diving back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.
Queer and Loathing in America 