Here we go again

I'm back, and to stay this time.

It's been a short year and a long one, both at once: so full of hard work it seemed to flash by, but so intensely involving that I feel as if I've been gone for ten years.

The Dark Reaches will be released a week from today, on Tuesday, June 30th. I've spent the last year and more writing it, finishing it, revising it, and recovering (which includes diving back into my freelance work).

Since turning Dark Reaches in, I've been fighting a battle most writers probably know too well: trying to balance life so that it includes writing without stinting spouse and children, a house, my "day job" (which often runs into weekends and evenings if I let it) . . . oh, and since late last December, a Cavalier King Charles puppy named Lucy. It's been an interesting process—difficult and infuriating and satisfying and mystifying in turns. And it's not done yet. Thirty-hour days would help, or maybe a nine-day week.

Or perhaps just adjusting my expectations. . . .

But here we are, and here I am, and I'm going to stick around. Not because I have a book coming out, though I'm proud of The Dark Reaches. But because I'm in this for the long haul. I have a lot more to write. And a lot to read—not just the pile of books on the shelf next to my reading chair, but online, too—blogs and communities where I've lurked and hovered on the edges but never quite dived in. It's time to dive in. There's so much to discover, so many people to talk to about writing and reading and science fiction and science and, and, and.

And, I'm realizing, I've got things to say. I'm excited about a couple of interviews that will be coming up online soon—I'll be linking to them here. I was also profiled in the January issue of The Writer magazine, on the "How I Write" page—the first science fiction writer they've ever featured there. To boldly go, etc., etc.

So . . . let's just see what happens. That's most of the fun in life, after all.

It's good to be back.