Future Words

All my plans involving other people got complicated, and are back burnered.

I’m mostly-finished with a science fiction romance. Working title is Alien Tongue but I’m sure I can come up with something better. It has more sex and violence than anything else I’ve published so far. Plus the plot is inspired by a historical occurrence, and I’m a little nervous about whether that’ll be taken as cultural appropriation. 

I’m not really sure why I wrote it. I’m slightly worried it’ll do detrimental things to my nonexistent reputation. 

My original plan as a science fiction writer had to do with finding a social niche within the greater context of SF fandom. When you get older and your friends start dying off, you tend to need a source for new social activity. I figured I could get together with a handful of other old farts to talk about books, and use my talent to help steer kids toward science, and critical thinking. Entertain them too. 

Those plans fell apart, for many reasons, primarily Covid19’s squelching effect on nerdy socialization. I can’t not write though, it’s like sharks have to swim. During the last three years I started lots of writing I didn’t finish, and then I finished a horror novel. Now I’ve nearly finished another one; it has a science fictional premise but it makes no pretenses toward educating children. Lately my writing just wants to be a place to release my anxieties (while providing occasional info dumps). I think I’m entering an experimental phase, floundering around figuring out where my talent wants to go. Somewhere new, I would imagine, but I’m not sure where that might be yet, or whether it has even been invented. 

I won’t be working with editors-cover artists-readers for a while, anyway. It’s not cost-effective until I start selling more books. 

I’m unsure what I’ll be doing about conventions. I have tentative plans to attend Baycon. Possibly Worldcon once it makes its way to Seattle. I might even end up in the horror writer scene at some point, but for now, everything I’ve produced has been science fictional. 

Lately I’ve been thinking about veering toward fantasy, and writing something about a magical boarding school. For wizards. Except it’s a residential school run by cruel sadistic normals trying to crush that magical spirit right out of their students, until this one kid coordinates them to fight back against the horrible televangelist that runs the place. Anyway. I’ve also got a courtroom drama, a horror story about qanon, and a non-fiction book about K-Pop in the works. 

Did I ever mention the cool thing about being self-pubbed is the freedom to do whatever you want without worrying about tanking sales? Commercial writers get pigeonholed as SF or fantasy or horror depending on their first breakthrough, and often they get stuck in that genre rut for the rest of their career. 

I’ve been envious lately, of people who manage to put enough years into single-minded pursuit of their careers to win lifetime awards. I’m way more sporadic than that, and I’ve spent decades trying to figure out whether I’m actually a musician or a writer (and what genre of music/writing I should focus on). Here I am, pushing sixty and just getting started.

I’m going to try to use that as a strength. My reticence to get pigeonholed has led me to an unorthodox (and unsuccessful) place, but it also means I have more leeway than a lot of writers. Might as well wallow in it.