Playing My Cards Write
Another dumb pun for a title. But relevant. For though I would not be so dramatic as to consider this an announcement, I am making a statement as to one of my projects for the year. Going back to my earlier roots or writing short story collections, usually of 10 or 15 stories, with a common theme of some kind. When I do so I enjoy the adventure of representing multiple genres and styles within such collections. (I last did this with Order!
This time around, playing cards will be the theme.
This is not even the first time playing cards have figured into my fiction. Murder. Theatre. Solitaire made use of them as a partial character trait. But then as now I have always enjoyed playing cards. I would not go so far as to call it one of my Autistic special interests, but I do in fact own close to thirty packs of playing cards, so it’s at least a bit of a “thing” with me.
Nothing has been drafted of this collection yet, and I have no publishing date to share with you now, other than “later this year.” So stay tuned to hear more details in the coming weeks and months.
I look forward to exploring the particular challenge that is a themed story collection once again, and I hope you will choose to read it is ready.
Crop Rotation in 2024
Though it be a bit late in the month for New Year’s sentiments, this is nonetheless my first post of the New Year.
Plans flucuate through the course of a year, but I can say with certainly that there will be no new novel this year. After a long, intense time spent with The Rubble and the Shakespeare, I will be dedicated this writing year to smaller (in comparison) writing projects. Smaller that is in the sense of fewer words per project than a novel.
There will be a short story collection coming later in the year, for example. More details on that coming later on as I get more underway with it. And perhaps some poetry. Not to mention other things here on the site that have no home anywhere else.
This is a bit of a change for me, as before covid I tended to write one novel per year. While I do not anticipate, and indeed do not wish for along a process for my next novel as my current one, I no longer feel one novel per year is my style going forward.
I think of it as crop rotation. The notion in agriculture that planting the same thing in a field year after year will ruin the soil and yield diminishing returns. But to plant something different each year for a while allow different nutrients in the ground to replenish, thus producing a healthier, more bountiful crop.
So I hope for my writing. Shorter, less intense works this year following a whole novel experience of the last several.
I offer this advice, humbly, to all creative types that may read this. You have a passion and you have a speciality, to be sure. But perhaps it will flourish to a greater degree if you spend a little time (or a lot of time) on a different creative act before embarking on your next project in your “speciality.”
May both my creative fields, and yours, be fertile in 2024.
Writing the Ship in the New Year
Happy (soon) New Year. Not so happy pun, but it is what it is.
As 2023 comes to a close, my mind for at least a few minutes, enters into the same thought process as most do at this time of year; what do I want the New Year to bring?
Plenty.
But for the purposes of this site, I will mention only what pertains to this site. Namely, it will be in essence rededicated.
In likelihood, and regular reader will notice little difference. It is mostly a content decisions that I made long ago and put mostly into practice this year already. Henceforth, posts will focus solely on writing and the writer’s life. Plus I will post smaller pieces such as stories or other creative writing that I want somewhere, but it not really a fit, or practical enough for my to self publish as a stand aloe book, nor to submit to publications. Knowing they will have a definitive home will hopefully encourage me to write more of them.
The ascetic will mostly be the same. Colors, template, all of that sort of thing. But I will be ridding the site of some of the extra bells and whistles, that I increasingly stepped away from over the last few years. That process has already begun, as astute observers may have noticed.
I will use search keywords for meta data for the barest of SEO activity, but I will no longer make use of “categories” for specific posts, and will have fully dispense with that menu soon. It felt like the perfect thing to do when I started my website, when I foolishly thought I would have many more readers than I do, and that the key in making that happen was writing on multiple topics on a regular basis. (The previous incarnation of this site, which you can still see entries of, was a blood dedicated to my “unusual” thinking, or being “too xyz” for the world….a condition I later learned was in fact my Autism.)
Now I prefer to take a somewhat more focused approach to my content, and the most logical facet of my life, (now that I have spent the better part of this year writing about Autistic traits within the writer’s mind) is writing itself.
To have been keeping a website for so many years only to contract as opposed to expand may go against the expected trajectory of the internet. But when have I followed the expected directory, especially as a result of mere expectations?
The “My Books” page on this site, though it may get a visual overall at some point, will remain, with UBLs to direct people where to buy them.
So, here’s to a step back of sorts in order to spring forward further. This site will now officially be what perhaps it always should have been all along: focused on my thoughts on writing, and pieces of writing itself.
Happy New Year, and happy writing. See you in 2024.
Yes, Virginia, It Is Worth It. Usually.
For several years around this festive time of year, I reposted a thought piece of mine on “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus,” the famous New York Sun editorial from the late 1800s. I considered it, and still do, one of the greatest opinion pieces ever written in English. I stand by the claim. If somehow you have not read it yet, do so. And though last year I changed things up a bit, you can find my original thought piece reposted just about any years on this blog around late December.
The gist of it was how a single artistic effort by someone who shows up and gives a damn can leave a lasting impact far beyond anyone could possibly imagine. The effort and time put into the piece, (despite the absolute fact that it was part of the writer’s job) makes me think of my current novel The Rubble and the Shakespeare. (Now available at all major ebook stores by the way.)
I’m not by any means predicting I have written something destined for the same sort of transcendence as the Francis Church editorial. In fact, the parallel I am drawing between my novel and the editorial has nothing to do with my writing it per se It relates to some of the plots lines within the book.
In a half-ruined city still recovering from war, a man is asked by a friend to help him stage possibly the first ever Shakespeare production in the city’s history. (It was banned under the previous Regime.) Resources, people, venues, and other things must be secured and maintained in order to accomplish this. But in a place where sometimes food itself arrives late, and the cafe now serves coffee only, are the artistic and cultural endeavors worth the time and energy it will take to present in a vacated building something like The Tempest?
That is a question the main character attempts to answer throughout the book. In fact it is one of the central questions of the entire story—one I hoped to present when writing the novel in the first place.
And of course one that neither my novel, nor myself can answer for you. For myself the answer is of course, yes, or I would not write any of my novels. But one reason I usually answer yes to that question, (thought thank God I am not in a war torn environment) is the lessons learned from Yes, Virginia. Not so much or at least not only the Santa aspect, but the creation aspect. When I think that any given one of my creations could change lives, and when those in my novel try to contemplate the same thing regarding a theatrical production, “yes” is not only the fair answer, but it is the most hopeful, human one.
Midwinter Night’s Read
I think of literature and books around Christmas time. Despite lacking the reading speed to be a voracious reader as they say, I nonetheless associate the holiday season with both giving and getting books. (and hence shopping for them.)
Iceland has a deeply held tradition of jolabockaflod, or book flood, wherein books are given on Christmas Eve and read deep into the night before bed. So despite having no Icelandic blood (that I know of) the connection between the holiday and books gives me something in common with the Nordic nation.
Winter as a hole, not merely Christmas seems the ideal reader-oriented time. Fall as well, but moreso winter I dare say. And while my latest novel, The Rubble and the Shakespeare does not specifically mention Christmas, it is set during winter, which I think adds to the creative notion of putting on a play. We are compelled to look more inward during the chill of the seaaon, and find our greatest connection to our imaginations. My story would have worked in any season, but winter, in a crumbling city brought out the natural human instinct, (as I have seen it), to create.
So if you feel as I do, download my novel, light a fire if you have a fireplace, and join your new friends in a winter surge of creativity. Just go to My Books and follow the purchase links.
Ty Unglebower 