I decided to try a slightly different process than normal for the update on the movement to Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest, so that post will be up tomorrow, and today you get something like a stream of consciousness.

Work on The Inner Tower is going well, for the most part. I think I will never understand why my brain just refuses to cooperate sometimes, for no discernible reason. Even so, I’m following the map I laid out, and discovering an interesting landscape. There are a few geographic locations in that world that were established before I began the exploration that is writing a first draft. Beyond that, it’s been mostly blank, and the landscape has been filling in as I go.

When the plot of this thing started falling into my brain like Tetris blocks last year, I decided that I was going to be deliberately formulaic with my writing, and see what sort of interesting story I could create within more conventional limits. I say “more conventional”, because my first novel, Exits and Entrances, was very much experimental. The biggest difference you’ll probably notice, should you decide to read it, is that every other chapter is a short story that’s peripheral to the main plot. I don’t recall why I thought that was a good idea, but I think it turned out decently for a first novel. I don’t think I was a particularly good writer at that point in time, but I try to remember that there are books out there that are much worse by every metric I can think of, save popularity.

I will have to return to that particular laboratory, because there are two books still to write for that trilogy, but for my current project, I’ve chosen to run with a version of The Hero’s Journey, with a few other constraints and rules from bits of writing advice I’ve encountered over the years.

I guess you could say that this series just a different kind of experiment, but I think it’ll be a more familiar reading experience for regular “young adult” fantasy readers, at least for the first couple volumes. After that, things will get a little stranger, because I just can’t help myself.

Part of the reason you’re getting this particular blog post, is that I was getting tired of video posts, and I doubt I’m alone in that. The other part is that, after a cold snap in which we actually got snow, it’s the first classic Beautiful Spring Day since the sun went away. That means that I’m sitting at a folding table out in the middle of our little walled village, while His Holiness Saint Ray the Cat explores.

While there are cats and foxes that use the walls as a convenient path, His Holiness is to lazy, and too much of an indoor cat to even realize that that’s an option. This means that if I set myself up in the center of the village, I can keep an eye on both of the gates through which he might escape into the wilds of Dublin.

The birds around here are used to avoiding better hunters than he, and the only rodents I’ve seen have been invasive squirrels, so while I very much doubt he’s a threat to them, if he somehow manifests far more energy than he’s ever shown to date, and gets very lucky, Ireland will be no worse off for it. So far, though, while he occasionally looks very intently at a bird, he mainly just eats grass. Honestly, my main concern is that another cat will come in, because His Holiness is an asshole when other cats are present. I don’t know if it’s childhood trauma, lack of socialization, or some sort of territoriality, but every other cat he’s ever interacted with, has been The Enemy.

And on that note, I think I’m going to end this post and go indoors, because it looks like it’s going to rain soon. If you ever think that the weather where you live is too constant, come visit Dublin, where it really does change every hour or so.

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