Navigating “Work”

I think the loss of the Cartographers project hit me harder than I thought. I’ve struggled to navigate my way back from it. Even with a map. Ha! Go have a better look at it here.

A very handsome author standing beside a very good map of a very dry place.

I mean, other things have happened so far this year, good things, exhausting things, draining things. You know how life goes. The double-barrel blast of ADHD and Autism means that once the energy is gone, it’s really difficult to get back. Even worse trying to figure out how it got back or why it disappeared in the first place.

I’m saying all this as a preamble that it’s been a tough month where I’ve had to force myself to rest, regenerate and think, and being knocked out with some kind of cold-like bug sure didn’t help all that. It forced me to take some time away from the writing itself, because it’s tough to write with a foggy brain, but hindsight tells me this was a good thing.

As a quick update there, this version of the Cartographer story has finally wrestled itself free of my expectations and the echoes of the story that preceded it, and has taken a life of its own. There’s a side character that’s quickly made itself more prominent and interesting than their initial creation intentioned, showing up as another homage to Mad Max-ian storytelling, in that the Road Warrior himself isn’t the subject of the story’s struggles, but a shifting fulcrum that tips the balance of the world.

Go watch Fury Road and see Tom Hardy’s iteration of Max as a prisoner, a stow-away, a hanger-on then a wheelman who’s instincts and violent acumen are the extra bit of bloodshed the true protagonists needed to secure their freedom.

Go back further and see in Mad Max 2 where Max is the one to break the siege that occupies much of the movie. Or in 3, where he’s the one to disrupt Tina Turner’s Auntie’s hold on Barter Town, and also to ferry the tribe of lost children to future to “do the tell.”

I see Turiska, the main character of this current project as just that. Not the inceptor or agent-provocateur of change, but the hidden balance point upon which these changing events happen. And to further tease you, if you’ve read the Hytharo books, you’ll know just what “change” can mean. If you haven’t, then this might… “fly over your head,” if you need another hint.

This is a book I need to give time to brew and grow like the creeping weed it is, and it shouldn’t be treated as a bonsai tree, which is another fatal factor of the last iteration here. I don’t think it’ll come out this year anymore, but it’ll be worth the wait, I promise.

Anyway, how am I doing? I feel like before I had a little bit of a burn out there, I was so feverishly fixated on writing that I let everything else of being an author fall by the wayside. The marketing, the future planning, the swapping tips and actually having friends, all of it was forgotten because the energy I was burning so brightly was all being channelled onto the page.

It means that now, as I come back to work, rested and re-energised, I need to spend some time figuring out what “work” means. Because I’m not one to do things by half-measures, it meant that it took me a while to work out that variety will have to be the spice of life here, and I CAN’T just spend all day on the one thing. Sure, that might be obvious to write here, but I assure you it’s not something that comes naturally to me! I’m doing my best though, and I hope to “live out loud” a bit more in these coming months, because I’ve become a reclusive weirdo.

Anyway, I’ve got my second market of the year next weekend, and I’ll be having a decent little streak of them coming through this autumn, so I’m excited to see some faces, make some friends, and cringe as I fill up the car at the servo.

For other stuff I’ve been into, I’ve got a Warhammer tournament coming up which should be a blast. I’m six seasons into the entire box set of Monk, which I feel is pretty much what would happen if you took Doctor Who and stripped out the sci-fi, the time machine, and the britishness. My partner and I have also been blasting through ER, and waiting with bated breath for when one of the characters gets squashed by a freak helicopter crash.

I’m also back into reading, though the last few weeks has been a bit of a gap due to the aforementioned brain fog. I’m halfway through Perdido Street Station and am in utter awe at the intricate depths and dancing prose in those 800 pages. I’m also a few chapters into Ainy Cormac’s Prepare For Me A Shallow Grave, which is his debut grimdark fantasy effort that so far hasn’t failed to serve me up a delectable little surprise every few pages, such as the king of the realm occasionally wearing a squid as a hat.

My last big thing has been getting off my damn phone. It’s turned off most of the time, so I’m slower to reply to messages, but I hate being constantly “on-demand” anyway. It’s part of my efforts to disconnect from the internet as much as possible, especially when working, which includes a 2 kilo dictionary/thesaurus that I got from the Op-Shop for as many dollars, which still lists George W Bush as the president of the states. More things change, eh?

Thanks for reading all this word vomit. It’s the fist time in a while where it’s come naturally to share, and I hope you’ve found it entertaining enough. I’m going to whack more shit up on Instagram just to keep that machine going, and also stoking the fires in the Discord server I started for the books. Jump in, send me a message here or there, you’ll figure it out. I always love hearing from people.

And you’re people, ain’t ya? I sure hope you are.