Directions...

It's the week for another blog update. I just got back from my last work trip for the year to Mexico City, where I got to soak up some inspiration and meet some great people. Work in general has been crazy-busy with many long hours put in, plus family life and other things to do — but the book is always there, on the back burner of my brain.

Earlier this year, I had been telling friends that the book might be ready for release around this time, but obviously the book said "I'm not ready" and many important changes were needed. It's in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment, as I've cast a few nets out into the publishing world and waiting to see if anything catches. Once I know more about how this pans out, let's just say a release time for the book will become clearer.

In the meantime, I do have other projects I'm thinking about and playing with. Part of the process behind the Gnomes book was cutting out several poems that didn't fit into the thematic flow it's taken on, so these "cut-outs" are being formulated into a second volume. My working title, at this point, is There Would Be Owls Everywhere.

I also have ideas for some short stories and sketches which might come together into another book, currently in mind as a working title of The Ice Cream Truck at Midnight. This book concept is inspired in part by the insanely-brilliant work of Shaun Tan, particularly his masterpiece Tales from Outer Suburbia. This image of the water buffalo is from that book, which I bought a used copy from a friend who was having a moving sale, and it opened up a vista to me in terms of the style of storytelling and the kind of work I'd like to do.

On top of all this, I have a rough outline for a fantasy novel, based on a draft I wrote 16 years ago. Some of the characters in Gnomes of the Cheese Forest and Other Poems are actually from this story. Every now and then I jot down some ideas for fleshing this project out.

So this is what's on my mind, when I have moments to spare. It's like a water buffalo pointing the way to directions on an invisible map. I only know there is one direction he's pointing me to, but I won't know how to trace the rest of the journey until I've arrived.