April Showers...

The spring rains continue here in Ireland. Now that Easter is over, people are gearing up for summer and the long days that come with it. Sunset is already at 8:30 PM now and by the time we get to midsummer sunset will be around 10:30 PM. What's really interesting is that from mid-May through the end of August, Ireland doesn't have full night, only what's called Astronomical Twighlight. It still looks like "night" to the naked eye, though. The long daylight can make it difficult to get to sleep, but, well, I'm a night owl anyway, so I manage. At it's longest, since we're far enough north, we get a 17 hour day!

In writing news, my Lent Short Story Working was a success, even though I wasn't able to do all 47 stories. Looking back on it last week, I realized I'd bitten off more than I could chew. I did end up writing a good number of short stories during that time and I really liked the stories I did write. A few of them, I think, will be expandable into novel-length projects. I do think that if I decide to do this again, I'll limit it to 2-3 stories a week, since the stories require a bit more of my brain power than poetry does.

Speaking of short stories, I've recently been listening HFY SciFi stories on YouTube. HFY stands for "Humans, fuck yeah!" which means, simplistically, the stories are about humans being the scary weirdos of the galaxy: either depicted as apex predators, or that they come from a high level Deathworld but still manage to survive (because everything on our planet wants to kill us), or that we're scary weird because we do stuff like eat spicy food or go nuts over coffee. It also has stories about how humans can form communities and will protect innocents just because we can. Some of them remind me of Babylon 5, to be honest, which is my all-time favorite scifi series (and an massive influence on my own work).

The stories have been fun and good to fall asleep to, but it got me thinking that maybe I could do something similar with my own short stories. I like to make sure the all my writing is accessible, which is why I do the Tales from Flat Space podcast for my Survey novels, and I know that people enjoy my reading. So, I think I'm going to try my hand at YouTube channel where I read my own short stories for folks to listen to. I'm still working on the details, and will post more about it once I'm ready to launch. Eventually, I might add stories in the same genre from other authors who'd like me to read their stories for them.

As far as eBook releases are concerned, those have been pushed back for the time being due to IRL stuff. For now, I'll just be releasing the new Survey books in podcast form, starting with "Nemetona" in May. I'll need to think about whether it's feasible to do an audio version of The White Queen. That one may have to be something that I have for sale somehow (since it's 18+ content).

Again, I'll post updates as things progress with all of these projects.

In streaming news, I'm sure most of you have seen that I've been on a break for a while. That, too, is up in the air for the moment as I figure out the reading schedule for Nemetona, the short stories, and some IRL stuff.

I hope you all had a great Easter and are getting ready for the lazy days of summer. There's a lot of changes afoot for me, and I truly appreciate everyone's support while I figure things out!