I realized that I haven’t updated this website since late August. Of course, this is nothing new as I frequently go long periods of time without updates. This site is certainly something which I should be updating and maintaining more frequently, but do not…largely because it is usually pretty far from my mind. (Yes, I sometimes forget I have a website. Yes, I know this is unhealthy, especially given the state of the internet.)

Either way, by way of updates, I want to cover a few major points for the time being…

• Updates and Progress Reports on the follow-up to The Aos Si’s Gift
• Updates and Progress Reports on The Pale Man
• General Notes

First and foremost, I don’t recall if I said this before, but the first draft of the follow-up to The Aos Si’s Gift was sort of a disaster. Tentatively titled, Long Live the Queen, it’s a valuable lesson that advice from one field is useful in another, to whit, “your gut has a survival instinct. Listen!”

Well, I didn’t listen. Consequently, I wasted a lot of time and effort on a first draft which should have been relegated to the dustbin about 60k words in rather than the roughly 145k words it reached and the roughly six months largely wasted on it. Fortunately, it was not a total loss with at least a whole chapter or two being salvageable along with a few passages. The result, of course, has been a mix of salvaging what works and completely rewriting what does not. Of course, this has also included adding quite a bit of material as well which wasn’t present in the first draft.

On the other hand, this brings the story back up to about 146k words at present. As for the story flow, I’m about to where I left off before, except the major characters are…well…actually actively involved in advancing the story. So far, I’m on track to have a story which is slightly shorter than The Aos Si’s Gift. However, I am (obviously) not on track for completion by end of year.

Of course, The Pale Man is the elephant in the room for me right now. It’s not complete, not even close. Frankly, making an attempt at writing short-form horror has, thus far, been a disaster. Not only have I been unable to keep up with weekly posts over on Substack, I’ve largely been unable to advance or complete the work at all. I’ll simply say straight up that I am completely stumped at this point. I know how I want this story to work out, but I can’t see a path beyond the point I’m at. In this case, I may need to take the proverbial L…hoist the white flag, and admit defeat. I feel as though I’ve written myself into a corner with no path to an ending, or at least not one I would consider a proper ending.

Yes, given what is there so far, I could skip straight to an epilogue, ending The Pale Man in a manner similar to the 1982 film Poltergeist–that is, admitting that the danger is too powerful, forcing the family to flee. I’ll admit that what I’m butting up against may be more a matter of personal beliefs than what is proper to the story. I don’t like running away as a manner of ending things, especially not what is effectively a permanent ending to a story. It’s been said that, “the only thing needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing,” which is how a running-away ending feels. At the same time, this isn’t something that can be defeated by a bullet. Yes, evil should be confronted and destroyed, at least to the best of our abilities, but how? What works in this case?

I don’t rightly know, and I’m willing to admit that.

Put in short…I messed up on The Pale Man. I wrote myself into a corner that I don’t think I can write myself back out of. Obviously, if anything further occurs to me, then I can certainly return to The Pale Man; but, as it stands, I can’t seem to do that.

All of that being said, I’ve got all of the necessary edits completed for the re-release of The Princess in the Cell. I am working on the groundwork for the pencil illustrations which I’ll be including in the updated work. I wanted this to be something at least a touch different from my usual (medieval-flavored) material, so I’ve been researching mid- to late-18th century clothing, customs, etc. In many respects, this has resulted in a return to the drawing board (both proverbially and literally), as I’m having to learn to draw clothing from the relevant period–a task which is at least somewhat more difficult than one might think. This, of course, has also been a (relatively) low-priority project. Being at the bottom of my list of priorities, unfortunately, means that I’ve had little time for this work, as well.