Reporting Live From the Emotional Basement of the Calgary Airport

It's raining, it's pouring, summer is over and my kids are back in school, my house is quiet. I'm on my second cup of coffee (update: since I started writing this blog post, I have relocated to The Naked Bean and started a third cup). I'm working on a new book! 

This one is patiently(ish) waiting in the wings; the official release date has been set—June 22, 2027!—and as of right now we're done developmental edits but not copy edits or proofreads, which means, basically, that the story is finished, but the book is not polished. It also doesn't yet have a cover or blurbs or any of those fun things, but it's all happening soon, I'm told. So exciting, for sure, but this in-between waiting time kind of reminds me of that long hallway in the Calgary airport to the basementy terminal where you have to go if you're flying somewhere boring (IYKYK). You keep turning corners thinking that your gate will be around the next one, but there's just more hallway, more stairs, more moving sidewalks. You know, you do, that one of these large hallways will have a smaller hallway at the end of it, and at the end of that hallway, an airplane, and that before you even know it your plane will be touching down at your destination, that you will not always live in the basementy terminal of the Calgary airport, but also, for a couple of hours, you kind of don't know that at all. 

Anyway. When I find myself in this place, where I think I have inadvertently become a permanent resident of a liminal space, I find that it is not in my best interest to sit and stare at a wall (or my empty email inbox) until my plane comes to get me. 

Movement! Distraction! Food and coffee! 

So, like I said, I'm working on a new book. 

Actually, to be very accurate: I'm bouncing around between three new ones. One of them is strange and scary, one is kind of a weird comedy involving a cult, and one is a speculative thing, even more sci-fi-leaning than I've done before. I've never had so many ideas pop into my head at the same time, but it's great for me because sometimes when I'm writing, I hit a dead end, or I get bored (and when I write bored, my writing gets boring), or I worry that the thing I'm working on is stupid. So this way, if I'm working on a book and my brain gets mad, I can just x out of that screen and see if my brain is happier on a different one. 

I find it often is. 

(NOTE: if I know you in real life and the next time you see me you're like, "I read on your blog that you're working on new books; what are they about?" please don't be offended when I react as though you've pulled out an axe and asked if I'd like my head chopped off. I don't know why that question still does this to me; it just does. I just hate it. I find it weirdly humiliating? Like you've asked me to show you my belly button. Hey, I don't really make the rules in this brain, I just live here.)

Anyway, I'm going to go off and write those books, or at least one of them, or maybe all three of them will dovetail together and I'll realize halfway through that they are actually just one creepy, funny, culty, sci-fi novel. 

That wouldn't be so bad. I'd read that.