The Disappearance of Clifton Hill

Not to be confused with the creepy looking movie with my name in the title, rather this is a post of: What have I been up to?

No shooshing, one-eye.

I realize that I have been awful quiet. Life does that sometimes, but the writing has never stopped. Just my ability to go outside of the writing and do book reviews to my expected level of quality, or to wax on about the craft of writing has become surprisingly challenging. Truth be told, I have become highly concerned with government overreach into our lives, sticking their hands increasingly into the realm of the education of our children, mandating what people can or can not do, and privacy concerns with Big Tech as well as censorship of lawful speech. If this all continues, then I question how we, as a nation, will continue to be a Free people. For that matter, as world events continue, that concern extends to all corners of the globe.

But getting deeper into that here is not my intent. (Check out my Twitter feed if you are of a mind—assuming it isn't censored by now.) These world events have taken much of my time and thought over the last couple of years, and I really need to take a break and explore my writing and genre fiction, to find the joy that is there in the written word, and share that joy with you.

It's nice to sit down at the keyboard and compose my thoughts and convey them out into the ether for those that find such things to be of interest. All...two of you? I haven't blogged for quite a while, and while I've spent more time on social media than I should have, I haven't found the enjoyment there that I may have once had.

So, suffice it to say, I have been busy, but the work of writing has continued. Kip the Quick's sequel is finally at long last done. At over three times the size of the first book, clocking in at 178k words, Kip's Return is a sizable story, but then the consequences set in action by the first novel have scope and depth that Kip must unravel in his desperate attempt to escape the dread result of his actions.

It's an exciting book, thrilling, full of Kip's wit, and we also explore two other characters that have their own sides of the story to tell, so the POV is expanding. When I realized that the book needed more than just Kip's POV, I had to ask myself if it was really appropriate for multiple first-person POV's. And in the end, it wasn't. Kip's voice is unique, and he IS the story. Someone else with a first person view just wouldn't have worked. So I went third person POV for the other two characters. And in the end, I think it worked our marvelously.

We also get more into the magic of the world; there is a lot of fun mystery here and for the attentive reader there is much to learn, hidden in the text.

So, where are we with the actual deliverance of this book into your hands? Well, it's with my copyeditor, and unfortunately she became very popular at some point between later last year and when I finally got her the manuscript, so unless her schedule frees up, I won't have the book back from her until late 2021, or early 2022. This will mean the book will take till 2022 to actually be in stores. This is, as you can imagine, disappointing. It has already been nearly 5 years since I released book 1. But...life.

And I think I've learned some things along the way.

So what do I do between now and then? Well, I'm nearly done with a Kip short story that takes place between book 1 & book 2 that I'll be looking for a magazine publisher for, and there is a middle grade story idea that I really want to tackle to share with my kids (and one day soon, you.) With the time available, it would make sense for me to write as much as I can of the last book in the Kip the Quick trilogy, but I need to take a bit of a break first.

I'm also undertaking the beginning of a podcast, this is just the soft launch, when I get things all squared away, we'll have a grand launch. Red carpet, local celebrities...you know, the works!

Well, that or I'll just make a blog post with pictures of all of the above and call it a day.

Fond wishes that you are finding positivity and joy in 2021.