They are upon this website like the haze that descends upon a blazing, stuffy afternoon. I’m not sure what it is about the middle of summer that makes any productive activity feel like a slog through knee-deep mud. Maybe I’m distracted by the urge to wander aimlessly with my dog, or the anticipation of an upcoming week without work at the beach. Either way, I have been in cruise-control in just about every facet of life recently.

“Jaed and Aston” is coming along in fits and starts — a paragraph here, an updated character outline there. My main goal for the short-term is to round out the first major section of the story (about six chapters), and send it off to a couple close friends who will eventually be my alpha readers for a completed draft. My main concern is that there is far too much exposition, and not enough actual movement in the narrative.

Longer-term, I want to be close to a finished draft by the end of the year. I think 120,000 words would suffice as a bare minimum word count for this story. There are other characters I could build up to bolster the meat of the book, but I like the idea of publishing a novella as my first work. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it leaves the door open for further development. I like the idea of fleshing out a polished manuscript sometime next year. And those peripheral characters I mentioned? Their stories may be a nice avenue for an indirect sequel; a follow-up, if you will.

Anyway, I also want to say thank you to all of the people who have liked and followed our blog recently. I’ve tried to reach out indirectly by checking out your writings, but I haven’t done nearly enough of it. It’s encouraging to know that even a small group of people enjoy what we’re trying to do here, which is… just to write, really. So, thank you. Keep plugging away. We will too.

Here’s a bonus haiku for sticking with us:

“Doldrums”

Wind sputters and slows
Calm canvass leaves all adrift
Yet the seas churn on

Steve D