So Now What?

Some of you may have noticed there was no novel post today. There's a good and simple reason for this:

I got nothin'.

Photo by Arnold Reinhold, by way of
Wikimedia Commons

When I first started Quipu a couple of years ago now (!!) my intent was to publish, online, those of my novels I hadn't been able to publish in the more traditional fashion. In other words, to give them away to anyone who was interested.*

I was writing, at that time, with a fair amount of energy and enthusiasm, and was confident I'd have new material to post here well before I ran out of novels in the desk drawers. After all, I had, what, a half-dozen of those? That's what I thought, at the time.

What I didn't think about—because who did?—was the impact a worldwide pandemic might have on my ability to write. Hell, on my mental health in general.† So when the big novel I was working on suddenly fell apart, and then my publisher went out of business before I could deliver a third French Intrigues novel, I found myself with no more fiction ready for posting. Unless I wanted to start posting unfinished novels and hope the potential for embarrassment if I didn't finish would be enough to get me writing again. Which, no, wasn't something I wanted to use as an approach. Not right now.

So for the time being I haven't any more fiction to share with you out there in Vacuum Land. And who knows when I'll feel like writing again? (Nice to know I'm not the only one in this position, but not all that nice since you ask.) I figure I'll be able to manage a dozen or so posts to fill out the rest of the year, but come January your guess, gentle reader, is as good as mine.

*I was never convinced I'd be able to make a living writing fiction, because almost nobody I knew did. I am even less interested in publishing now than I ever was before, though I hope to eventually regain my interest in writing as an activity.

†I've been fortunate: at least five members of my immediate family have been diagnosed with Covid-19 but none has been seriously affected.