A Bunch of Nonsense

Here’s a post from my Facebook Page. And to think, people pay me for words that I write!


Two and a half things: I am ridiculous, and I’m starting a newsletter, and I’m going to sneak a fun half-thing into a footnote of this post because why not?
 
THING ONE:
 
I finally let myself start reading the editorial notes on the fifth and final(?*) Withrow book, just now. I’ve been putting off reading these notes, focusing on other revisions for other books, for weeks. Maybe months. Withrow and Roderick and Jennifer and the Book People and that whole world is precious to me in a way I’m almost embarrassed to try to express. I love them deeply. They got me into this whole publishing gig. In fact, I think Withrow and Jennifer teamed up and dragged me into it kicking and screaming just to annoy me.
 
The notes from my editor are good and encouraging and also focused on what needs to be fixed and how to fix it, practical and actionable as always, because my editor is amazing. My fragile little egg-shell of an ego is fine. I am ridiculous. I’m rolling my eyes at myself /really hard/ right now.
 
And I’m sitting here on lunch break from my day job, with my brain full of day job things(TM), and I want to edit instead.
 
*shakes fist at mortgage*
 
Hi, and welcome to Michael Rambles Incoherently About Feelings.
 
THING TWO:
 
I’m giving a monthly newsletter a shot. The first round of subscribers have voted, and therefore it will feature serialized micro-fiction about an inventor and his talking cat in a post-apocalyptic future. It will probably also involve vampires or detectives or something because I was the kind of kid who played “Transformers crash-land on Etheria and meet She-Ra and together they save the command staff of COBRA (because COBRA was always the inherently cooler victim of GI Joe’s superior propaganda machine) from certain doom.”
 
The sign-up URL is https://www.subscribepage.com/v4h1v6 because I have yet to pretty it all up. I’ll be sending out the first micro-fiction this weekend, though, and then blogging it later so future subscribers can catch up.
 
——
* OK, so, that question mark has the potential to act as a tease and I try not to do that. There are non-Withrow things I want to write, and I have limited time. Like, I have a sci-fi novel coming out in the next few weeks and I am REALLY EXCITED ABOUT IT and I want to write sequels for it. I also have three more Emperor Norton novellas to write after the first one is revised and published (sometime in the next month or two?), though those are at least roughly outlined already and I know how each starts and how each ends and lots of the middle bits. And there are other ideas I want to pitch. But I also am not done with the world of Withrow! One of the things I want to pitch for later, when I have fewer things already under contract, is a the concept of “expanded universe” novellas for The Withrow Chronicles. There are characters in there I would love to spend 25,000 words exploring, but who can’t hold up a whole novel. And I want to write some Roderick-focused stories set in the mountains of WNC, but I’d rather write those as novellas than novels. I’d much rather tell three Roderick stories of 25,000-30,000 words each than one 80,000 word story about him. And I have this story about all the witches from The Withrow Chronicles still kicking around in my head, and I’ve written the first scene for it, and I love it, and it has to wait. And also I’m not sure it can carry a whole novel. What I’m saying is, I have spent six years telling people The Withrow Chronicles would be “five books and then it’s done,” and in one sense that’s true, but in another sense I will probably never be done with that world. These theoretical extended universe novellas aren’t even sufficiently formed to qualify as being on the back burner, but I’ll say that I’ve certainly spent some time doing an ingredients-check for the recipe.**
 
** Would you believe I started this post thinking I had nothing to say?*** I am, again, ridiculous.
 
*** This is now so long I’m going to copy and paste it into a blog post and I’m going to schedule it to repeat in a few days to get it in front of more folks. Sorry for the spam!

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