Revival

Colorado River Gorge in Canyonlands National Park

I was seriously considering closing out this blog. Hard to say why exactly other than there is so much else going on that I begrudge even the little time it takes to jot a note here. Summertime in Minnesota is hectic because we all know it is short and the big chill is not that far away. Writing has also taken a hit but that will make a comeback this fall. Had a good start on continuing work on Volume 6 but then the first really good weather hit, and...well, fall is not that far away.

Also, after writing for a week or two this spring I became uneasy with the direction the story was going. Good writing but the wrong direction, or I should say perhaps not being true to the characters. Maybe they were chiding me. Anyway, I know where to go now.

Working

Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, sign post

Nearly finished reading volume 6. On several occasions while editing I have had the thought, "Who wrote this?" So much has changed since five was written and six started, a lot of time has passed. Now, with the perspective of time, and having read through two volumes, I cannot avoid seeing that what I wrote is not what I ever would have said or thought about saying. That's another way of expressing how continually amazed I am at the differences between what we write and what we say. Who wrote those books? And not only five and six. All of them.What part of me wrote those books? I could expostulate on the circumstances of that time, but that would just be window dressing.

I know the books of this series will serve a purpose, for they are the stuff of life. Maybe I will find out who wrote them when work resumes on volume six.

Writing begins

Second ballon caught in profile at dawn over Sussaflei in Namibia

I started back to work, my real work, about ten days ago. Don't know exactly how it happened, or what changed, but something has been building now for several months. A great unrest within. What a treat to sit back down and start picking up the threads of The Alarai Chronicles saga. Originally I planned to drop back to volume four, read through it, move on to five, and then to six where I left off nearly a year ago and where the writing will begin again, but instead started reading five.

That was the right thing to do since a major shift in the flow of the story begins in book five. Or maybe I should say that a major plot theme ends with volume four, ripping open the veil of confidence in what is thought to be reality.

Everything is changing, and I am glad. Soon the real work of writing will begin, and true satisfaction.

New Image

South African Wine Country at Dusk (taken from the Seidelberg Winery)

I moved to Minnesota in 1997. Prior to that time while actively writing volumes I-III, I developed the habit of sketching scenes that I was trying to understand how to represent in words, or that just tugged at me. I had no particular drawing talent but managed to pencil a collection of images with the help of many erasers. After moving to Minnesota I picked up Photoshop and a pretty good scanner. The learning curve for Photoshop was tough but one by one I learned to add color to the sketches and smooth out many problems. Then disaster struck. My computer failed.

The computer would not boot no matter what I tried and no matter the advice from experts. Fortunately I had backed up the images to an external drive and once the computer was re-formatted reloaded the images only to find that a software glitch had corrupted every image.

Managed to reconstruct all of them except one. Couldn't even find what was left of it. I cannot begin to count the hours I had spent drawing in each tree individually and working to get the mountains just right. All I had left was one hard copy printed by an early Epson dot matrix.

To come to the point here, scanning it in I worked on it off and on for over five years to bring it back to even a semblance of the original. After this last effort I think it's there and is better than the original in many ways. It's called Bora Mountains in Winter and can be downloaded at ardentpublishing.com either as an HD Pdf or smaller jpg file.

The Alarai Chronicles series has been a labor of love and worth every hour. What a trip.

Summertime

Dawn over the Namibian Desert

Can't say how it's going to turn out, but just for the fun of it I'm going to set up a booth at the Riverwalk Market Fair in Northfield on at least a couple of Saturdays. Nothing fancy, just a canopy, two or three BIG posters, and a nice display of volumes I and II, Exile to the Stars and Songs of Deep Green. It will be fun just to kick back and meet people. Might even sell a few books, but that's only part of the story. This is for fun. Should have some dates and place information to post in a few weeks. Hope you will drop by if possible.

Formatting

Capetown South Africa at dusk

Recently, maybe over the last month or so, an unease has been steadily building. I find my thoughts drifting off into plot scenarios and dialogue streams. The other day it was a major digression from the task at hand to review images related to later volumes in the series. Is it about writing or, perhaps more accurately, getting ready to resume writing? Don't know. Maybe it's just Spring... Time will tell. Whatever the case, something is brewing and although this internal and growing sense of urgency is unsettling, I like it.

The frist review

This was quick. I received the first review of Songs of Deep Green in the mail today. I like it!