Blog Post No. 531
At the end of the 2000s, I spent some time in another city for school. The city in question is a bit larger than the one I’m from, but it’s also fairly close. It takes less than two hours to get there on the highway. Personally, I like to take the back roads, which makes the trip a little closer to three hours. I did that drive a good dozen times that year, driving past small towns with a couple of stop signs (or sometimes the highway went right through them). Since the drive was leisurely and my mind wanders, I liked to imagine what my life would be like if I moved to one of those towns.
My first love of books came from reading Philip K. Dick short stories in high school. I loved the creative ideas and the tight prose. I had an idea that I wanted to tell stories before discovering those collections, but after reading them, I started to see the possibility of becoming a writer.
Here we are in the middle of winter (or technically the latter half, but it’ll be a while before spring gets here). The days may be getting longer, but it’s still gets dark really early. I’ve found myself commenting a few times that it feels way latter than it actually is. The lack of light is draining. In the winters, I often think about the years my dad spent working in a factory. He would leave for work in the dark, spend all day inside with few or no windows, and drive home in the dark. 
It’s August (already, somehow) and for better or worse, I’ve put the Invasion Novel aside to start the fifth novella, Snow from a Distant Sky. I had a really good plan for July that would result in me getting the third and fourth draft of the novel done and (ideally) put me in a good position to have some folks get their first look at the book. That didn’t happen. Between going back to the 
It’s my birthday tomorrow and it’s one of the big milestone years. I haven’t really felt the same kind of excitement for birthdays since high school. Not to say that birthdays make me sad. I just see them as a marker of the years and my years are starting to add up. It’s all relative and as much as age is just a number, there are more battle scars each time the date rolls around. In my mind, I’m the same kid excited to get out of high school, sure that he’ll blossom in university, and bummed out that exams start on his birthday. That’s real, by the way. For all four years of high school, my first exam was on my birthday. 
I’ve picked myself up off the floor, dusted my myself off, and gotten back to work. It’s only a start, but I feel like I’m rebuilding the routine with editing the Invasion Novel. I’ve said it many times, but 
The time has come. No more dragging my feet. It’s the first week of may and I have only three months before I’m planning on starting the fifth novella (
I think it would be fair to call this an update, but the title came before content so I’m leaving it. As I write this, there are 14 days left in the month and left to get the coveted discount on the sett-up fee at the printer. I just finished the last review/edit of 
While 
Ben Van Dongen 