Updates on Current Doings (or, 2022 Begins to Take Shape)

I sketched up the major projects I'll be tackling this year, Event Fatigue (the third Kindle Vella; previously reported as Ex-Ray: Event Fatigue) and Death Is Wearing Me Out (the once-monthly project succeeding World Famous; a ghost story, since it's apparently the thing that attracts me at the moment).  Both should be very, very interesting, and more accessible than their predecessors (World Famous, being about wrestling, and Nine Panel Grid, which is probably quite impenetrable).

But let's talk about those a little more, shall we?  Technically I should've finished World Famous by the end of last year.  Didn't really turn out that way.  I have two chapters yet to write, but they'll be easy enough to finish, and would've been done this morning if the very computer I'm using at the moment had cooperated (clever companies think they improve everything when they sometimes make them needlessly complicated).  In hindsight I'm all the happier I chose to do this a year ago, and that I plugged away at it dutifully (sometimes with a little catching up).  

Even Nine Panel Grid, since it handles a story I intended to write nearly two decades earlier (alas, a comics contest I probably hilariously fell far short of even coming close to winning).  I'm now six chapters away from finishing, about a month and a half, since it's mostly a once-a-week project, having started at the beginning of October.

Event Fatigue will be forty-four chapters, the longest by far (double the length of Nine Panel) I've tackled for Kindle Vella.  I still need to flesh out the story, but it's going to be pretty straight-forward, and also involve superheroes.  I picked out a cover image that hopefully at least stands out a little better than my last two.  It also picks up characters originally derived from an older project, which only occurred to me when I finally sat down to begin an outline.  This one should be fun.

I'm still writing up material for Substack, in the meantime.  I have no idea if I have a chance at developing an actual following there, but it's worth an effort.  I plan to devote one installment to Nine Panel Grid, perhaps write an actual story (you'd understand if you had a look at Nine Panel exactly what I'm talking about) and the journey to working on it.  I did write a story in the Space Corps saga, and probably will do more in the future.

I know I was just talking about Space Colony Bactria, and obviously Collider, and I really need to get on Montague, but as a writer doing it on the side, I have to decide the projects that can work around the schedule.  

As always, we'll see.

Substack

In the world of comic books, one of the hottest topics in recent months has been all the major name creators who've decided to migrate their work to Substack.  So eventually, I got to thinking, maybe this is a venue I should consider.  This week I did more than consider.  I started Scouring Monk at Substack.

Now, longtime followers of my blogging know "Scouring Monk" isn't exactly a new title for me.  My first blog (which, sadly, is pretty much abandoned at this point), was of course also called Scouring Monk.  Most of the readers I've ever had in blogging read my work there.  I launched a thousand other blogs later, including this one, but it was for a long time what I most considered "home."  

So, barring any better ideas once I made a commitment to considering Substack, I named it Scouring Monk.

The only other problem was that I had no idea what this new thing was actually going to be.  The setup prompted an answer to this, and I spit out, "uh, fiction, and books, and film," which of course are among the primary things I've been doing as a blogger anyway.

And then I had to actually provide content, which comes in the form of an email newsletter.  The whole idea of Substack is that you collect a list of subscribers.  Successful Substack users can then consider the paid option, in which subscribers are given the option of paying for content.  Very successful Substack users can make considerable money out of this.  

Given my track record, I can only believe in my prospects in an optimistic manner.  So far I have sent out three newsletters.  Each begins with a new piece of short fiction, and then talk about a book I've read recently, and then a movie, which for the immediate future means movies released in 2021.  I only have the strength of my writing, as always, to go on.  

None of this means I will stop blogging, meanwhile.  This author blog is a separate thing.  I have a Star Trek blog, and a movie blog (the latter maintained sporadically), and a few others.  Only madmen attempt to read all of them, although now it's a lot easier to do so, on the off chance you would like to label yourself as a madman.  Although, honestly, few enough people are reading even this one these days, once I made that break with the Cavanaugh folk.  (Even Cavanaugh doesn't visit anymore!)

I know, I know, stop making the hard sell!

Anyway, hopefully I can continue to do stuff.  I made a concerted strong initial push, to help establish tone.  Can't say if that will be maintained.  Usually, these days, my best is once a week, depending on how motivated I'm feeling.  This is the longest post at this blog outside the pandemic journal I've done in a while.  Hurray!  

I will certainly let you know if things turn out very differently.