1. Another St. Patty’s Day weekend in the books for the private hire driving. The hastag #wasbusy pretty much nails it. Lotta miles, great customers. Off tonight for a concert in town by the funk band “Mlima” at the Bluebird.  I’m really looking forward to it.

2. Writing continues…in fact once I’m done with THIS writing, I’ll be doing THAT writing.

2b. For years I’ve had a tale stirring in my brain. A Space Opera, grand in scope, but centered on one family trying to make a new start. I blame Peter F. Hamilton for this situation. He had something like this in a side story in his magnificent “Night’s Dawn” Trilogy that just grabbed hold of me and to this day hasn’t let go.

That whole plot could be a “sideline” because the gargantuan set of books (3 in total) had to be broken up into two parts for each volume in paperback. Massive is as good a word as any…and I go back to that world about once a year.

This is also the “raison d’etre” for the biggest disaster I’ve ever had in the writing process. I decided to “pants” *  this story, knowing full well how big a project it was…and wrote myself off a non-returnable plot cliff…400 pages into the narrative. It nearly wrecked me, as the story had occupied my mind like the siren call of a deadly mermaid for a couple years.

Rather than completely freak out, I sat aside the brick of paper and moved on to other things for a time.

I WILL write this story. Working through the epic tale of Julian Deltolle in the After the Burning series, I have learned more than I ever thought I wanted to about writing a large sprawling tale. The difference between the current work and this space saga is P.O.V….Julian’s tale is a limited 3rd person point of view taking you on one person’s journey. The space saga is…multi-pov…with a huge cast of colorful characters that I’ve already had the chance to meet, and who occasionally pop up in my thoughts asking me when their tale will finally get told.

Now that I am using Scrivener, keeping track of this tale will be a lot easier.

3. Mild political observation: It now appears that “email-gate” with a certain “shoe-in” for el-presidente’-status, is in fact some dirty pool being played by the current administration in true high-school dirty tricks fashion. Gotta love Chicago political machinations. Color me completely not surprised.  I think that if the country I live in ever got leadership that wasn’t corrupt to its bones, the universe would probably explode in a fit of shock. le’sigh.

4. Off to fill up the coffee cup and throw ice-water on the muse who I think is hiding in the closet.

*  “pants” = “Seat of the pants” in writerly parlance. In other words write the thing as it comes into your head with no net (i.e.: OUTLINE) involved.