Greetings, fellow humans.
This is going to be an understatement, but I don’t know how else to put it: it’s been a hell of a year, hasn’t it?
I’ve been at a loss for words when it comes to writing about the current moment in time for...well, at least a year. Mind you, I’m not sure I totally knew what I was doing last year, or the year before that, but at least then I could fake it. I even managed to write year-end blogs the past few years. But not this time. This time, the New Year came around, and...I just had nothing. Everything I could think to say felt fake or forced, or trite before its time. I felt hollowed out, in more ways than one. What’s the point of making a joke about how time has no meaning anymore, when we’ve all heard it so many times it’s no longer worth the energy of typing it out?
I don’t think those feelings have entirely gone away. But I think I may have turned a corner. I can feel something of my old sense of purpose returning to me. I almost feel motivated. It’s not exactly like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s more like I’ve been running in the dark so long, I no longer need a light to see the new strength in my legs.
And on that note...I have, in fact, been writing all this time. The one strange solace I’ve found the past few months has been indulging myself in a genre I had never really written in before, even though I’ve long been drawn to it: post apocalyptic fiction.
Somehow it feels at once like the most and the least obvious choice. We’re living through a pandemic, don’t you want to escape for a little while and think about something else? But also...we’re living through a pandemic, how could I possibly think about anything else?
Mind you, the apocalypses I’ve chosen to write about have little or nothing to do with viral outbreaks. As is my tendency, I drifted to a more action-oriented kind of world-ending. The ones with monsters and stoic cowboy types on dirt bikes. So I suppose, in a way, I’m having my cake and eating it, too: I’m writing about the feelings I can’t escape and I’m writing escapism at the same time.
And one of these stories is actually available to read right now! If you’d like to read a a small, sub-2000 word-count story about two buddies scraping a living together by blowing up giant bugs in the post-apocalypse, you can head here to check out How Thin the Membrane.
Of course, H.C. Logan hasn’t escaped my grasp just yet. Fresh off the heels of the third book in the Choronzon Chronicles, Shadow of the Wolf, I took a short break before diving right back in--and I’ve been going ever since. As a matter of fact, I would estimate that the first draft of Book 4, which is hovering around 90,000 words, is about two thirds of the way complete. If all goes as planned, I’ll be able to send out a teaser chapter in the next month! Mind you, Logan isn’t exactly living in a bug-fueled post apocalypse, but there’s a certain chaotic energy in the air that may or may not be exerting undue influence on the arc of Book 4. Nothing has outright changed from the plan I’ve had for this book for years now, but I will say that something about the last year has helped me feel completely free to commit to the more extreme plot elements I wanted to introduce. Can’t wait to share some of it with you all, very soon!
Finally, I do have a third project I’ve been working on--this one is also a post apocalypse story, but it’s more in the novella range of length. Right now, the title is The Night Driver, but I honestly don’t know if I’ll keep that. I have a full first draft done, completed back in December during my break right after Shadow of the Wolf. But I decided to put edits on hold until I have a draft of Choronzon Chronicles 4, so I haven’t gone back to it. And because it’s a novella, I’m not certain I know the best way of disseminating it. I think I’d like to find somewhere to submit it, but it needs to be the right fit, and I don’t yet know what that is. Whatever I decide, I’ll be sure to update you here!
And that’s just about everything. Keep an eye out for your next free teaser chapter in the Choronzon Chronicles, which I hope to be pushing out soon. And apart from that, if you’d like to read another story for free right now, just head right here.
And have a good rest of your week. Ciao!
-Tess
Hey, thanks for reading! If you’re new here, and you’d like to hear updates on my writing, including these blog posts and my ongoing novel series, The Choronzon Chronicles, then click below to sign up for my email list!
Alternately, if you’ve never heard of The Choronzon Chronicles before, but you think you might check it out, you can find the first book right here: Shadow Summoner.
