Wait, what?
One of my huge problems is attention span. Always has been. Always will be. Just ask the people who had the unfortunate job of being my teacher back in Lakehurst.
What this means is that even when neck-deep in a major project or three, my mind is on what’s next rather than what is right in front of me. This is true even right now. It’s not like I’m not busy. I’m currently working on a follow-up to A Year of Hitchcock with Jim McDevitt, the third installment of the Pitched! anthology series with a number of fantastic artists, a series on living through Hurricane Sandy, and whatever odds and ends come my way.
And yet still my mind is on what’s next.
So what is next? I can’t say for sure what I’ll get to — it all depends on opportunity, momentum, and where my mind is a month or two from now — but I can talk about what I’ve been tossing around.
Setting aside the idea of second drafting my (long overdue) dystopian science fiction novel and maybe self-publishing a traditional younger reader fantasy novel I wrote a few years back, there are a few things I’ve been tossing around. One is a pretty big project, but one worth doing:
An oral history of the Korean War. I’ve actually had this in mind for many years now. MANY years. The idea is simple: Talk to as many of the scores and scores of Korean War veterans who live in my area and tell their story in their own words. Simple as that. Seems as if it needs to be done, no?
Other projects in mind include:
Unnamed project with Zaki Hasan: Zaki and I have known one another online for many years. I respect his views on film, his writing, and him as a person, so when I had a chance to collaborate with him on Geek Wisdom it was just one more reason to be thrilled about being on board with the project. Earlier this year we got to talking about an exciting book project … but life has gotten in the way. I’m hoping that in 2013, we’ll both be able to clear space enough in our lives to git ‘er done.
A Short Story Collection (Or Three): This is another that has been brewing for a while. I have a nice little batch of short stories I’ve been sitting on, in some cases for many years, and I’d kind of like to get them out there just so I can finally call them “done” once and for all. (There is a finality in putting your work out in public that enables you to finally move on from it.) I’m thinking of self-publishing as an ebook, and maybe doing it as three distinct books — science fiction, fantasy, and traditional fiction. My worry? No one will read them … and the whole POINT is having people read them.
There are other ideas, of course. A whole notebook filled. But for the moment, these feel like the most pressing.
If anything catches your eye and you’d like to urge me on, let me know!
