Website: 8th anniversary

I turned sixty-nine today. The website turned eight. The last two years have been much more eventful for me than for the website, and even more so for this blog, which has continued to survive my benign neglect.

I continued writing over these two years. Six months ago, my son-in-law completed building a cabin in Scofield, Utah. I get to write there occasionally. It’s marvelous. Unfortunately, I have not written enough to complete either of the novels I started. The first, Orpheus Insufficient, is grounded science fiction, the story of a three-year-long voyage to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, in the years 2204 to 2207. Unfortunately, Orpheus, still unfinished, is over 130,000 words. So I am thinking I might rewrite it to add 80,000 or so more words and turn it into a trilogy rich in subplots.

The second novel is US 89. I started writing it for a contest, but needed to do more research than there was time for. It tells the story of a newspaper columnist in 2076 who is writing a piece a week about each of America’s fifty-two states. She ends up in Arizona, and it is suggested to her that she drive up US Highway 89, which goes from Arizona all the way to Canada. I wrote the Arizona chapters with little trouble, but everything past Utah stopped me in my tracks. The needed research may require me to actually drive the length of US 89. You would think that, being retired, that would be a simple thing for me, but my wife and I are surprisingly busy.

I have also been editing and rewriting scenes in The Time Well, the first in my time travel saga which could end up being eight to ten books. I have to rewrite because the science just wasn’t grounded enough. If we’re talking time travel, of course, it can’t be completely realistic. But my premise was too far out there. There’s going to be hand waving involved, but I wanted to stretch credulity only enough that suspension of disbelief would still come easily.

I continue to work on the sixth Time Well book, which has bloated to 399,000 words. It needs to be edited down and will still require three volumes. I am wondering how to make them work as stand-alone books, but it may just be impossible.

My second novel, Neyuki, is getting closer to being publishable. I have a cover artist, and a friend is typesetting it for me. I think that will all be done by the end of the month. It has taken me far too long to get this out. I kept thinking maybe I would go with a traditional publishing house. In the end, though, I have decided to self-publish. Marketing will be the hard part, and prepping the novel’s debut will take long enough that it won’t show up before July or August.

I have gotten much more involved with the local writing scene, working with two chapters of the League of Utah Writers. I have also joined Apex Writers, a writing community with international scope. Finally, I am still on the committee that puts on one of Utah’s largest writing symposia, Life, the Universe, and Everything, each year in February..