Fingers in pies

As usual, I’m flitting back and forth between projects, especially now it’s again summer. Mostly my time is taken up with the vegetable and perennial gardens, or just enjoying the bucolic nature of this village, and our home. I suppose summer is when I recharge, gain perspective and insight, which then becomes the well from which I draw throughout the winter. However, there are moments I do spend in front of the computer, pursuing creative endeavours of the the cerebral kind rather than the physical.

So, at the moment I have a short story about an horologist in the works. That’s going slowly, because as usual I’ve become distracted about the history of Windsor Castle, and the history of clocks. Such an awful lot of extraneous research for one short story. How very typical.

 

I’m also continuing to craft my historical novel set around 1000CE at the site of L’Anse aux Meadows. And, like the short story, I’ve been waylaid by a remarkable and huge tome of research by Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm. This is a remarkable history of the Vikings, and I think it behooves me to absorb it in order to add yet another layer of veritas to my novel, Hekja’s Lament. Just as when I wrote Shadow Song, I want this novel to ring with truth while also telling an engaging, perhaps even insightful, story about a slave who became part of that settlement which now haunts us as a ruin in Newfoundland.

And what else is a person to do when two paths of research have waylaid writing, but to wade into a decades old manuscript and decide it’s worth revising. This one’s a speculative fiction, Brogan’s Folly, which deals with a religious tyrant and subjugation based upon gender. It also deals with some pretty cool desert panthers which can shape and time shift.

So, yeah, that’s what’s going on at the Old Stone House.

In the meantime, you can always pick up a copy of any of my books in print, ebook and a few in audiobook, and leave a review, or just enjoy.

Happy summer, folks! Stay safe. Be well, Get your vaccine if you haven’t already. And laugh, because that’s the best medicine of all.