A year-end update
It’s been months since my last blog post. With the tumultuous nature of my 2020 (held together with spit and twine would be an understatement), it’s been easy for the days and weeks to whiz by in a mad blur – but I’m aiming to get back to this blog more regularly. Considering I’m writing this on December 23rd, I’ll consider it a New Year’s resolution.
On the writing front, I’ve been editing/finalizing the manuscript for my Asia-based short story collection, currently titled The Time of the Cassowary and Other Stories from Asia, which consists of my favorite of such stories that I’ve written throughout the years (a number of which are up over on the Stories page). I’ve sent it out quite recently to some select publishers, so I’ll see if there are any bites there. I’m not at all opposed to trying my hand at the self-publishing route either, so I’ll see how this plays out in 2021.
And then there’s my next novel, Whale Bones. This one has been in the works for years now. In fact, I just checked the creation date of the original file and actually feel guilty about how long ago I started and evidently how sluggish I’ve been with it. I’m not sure this one is meant to be completed that quickly, though, if it’s to properly become the final product that I envision – like Itsuki before it, it’s growing with me. In fact, I’ve now sunk myself back into it after quite a hiatus this year, and have found myriad things – even whole chapters – that just don’t work for me anymore and which won’t serve where I want this to go.
Whale Bones is a story about a fictional Nova Scotian fishing community. It contains dozens of characters. I’m trying to bring an entire small town to life, and though it’s a place out of my imagination, with its own traditions, intrigues, local legends, quirks (even absurdities), strife and geography, I’m nestling my own hometown into it, and small towns from all across Nova Scotia, and – I dare hope – familiar elements, little ghosts and shades, of small towns everywhere. I lived and worked for years in a small town in South Korea, with its quaint Main Street, babbling river, and cast of locals that gave it all its character, defined it, made it precisely what it is, and so I can say without a doubt that there are traits of the small town that are universal.
We’re also living in a world in which, in many cases, small towns are drying up – dying, to put it more directly. In our increasingly competitive economies, young people flock to the cities, or leave for work opportunities and new lifestyles elsewhere in their country, and even abroad. In Nova Scotia, at least, this combined with the decline of traditional industries have left many small towns and communities (not my own, I can happily report) with dwindling numbers of residents, aging populations, abandoned storefronts and all the rest. The community in Whale Bones is facing this – and yet, hope may rise and tides of fortune turn by the discovery of an immense rarity – in the form of a fossil – buried in a local cliff. In the end, it may come down to the history of the town, the personal histories of the people themselves, and whether the strength of its social fabric can hold, to determine whether ultimate decline can be mitigated.
One reason I’m laying all this out, admittedly, is that by publishing this information I hope to spur myself with a little self-imposed pressure to plug forth on Whale Bones and finally complete the first draft. It’s happening!
Concerning the blog itself again, there will be two new types of post featured in the coming year: Author Interviews and r/writingprompts responses. The interviews will happen when I’ve read something I like, reach out to the author for a chat, and conduct a written interview with them if they’re up for it (read: if they even respond to me). I’m looking forward to getting in touch with more writers through this and posting interviews here that will let readers get a peek into their thinking and their lives. The other feature is quite straightforward: I’m active in a great community over on Reddit called r/WritingPrompts in which anyone can post a writing prompt and anyone can respond to it by composing a short piece of fiction (typically in a more or less spontaneous manner). I have a lot of fun over there, so I’m going to share it around by reposting some of my responses, which I write under my handle u/PrimitivePrism, and their corresponding prompts here. You never know what you’re going to see with those – like, literally, they could be anything.
Lastly, 2020 was the year Itsuki finally made its way out into the world. Despite the (ironically-timed) pandemic and all it has entailed, that made this year a really special one. Thanks to all who have read it so far, or who may read it in the future.
All right, enough year-end shop talk. Back to my word processor.
(Photos by Thomas Lipke and Rachael Henning)
