A couple of months ago, I attended the opening of a science fiction exhibition for which a friend of mine (Hugh Spencer) was a consultant. It was an interesting exploration of the early years of the genre. While there, I spoke to another friend of mine (Allan Weiss) who had written an encyclopedia of Canadian speculative fiction. He showed me the index, where, to my delight, I found my name. Oh, sure, I was probably mentioned in passing in a footnote to an appendix that nobody is likely to read, but recognition!
In our discussion, Allan mentioned that he believed I write a lot. I don’t know. I write just about every day; over the years I guess it piles up. But it’s just what I do, so I don’t usually think it’s especially newsworthy.
But 2023 – wow!
In January, I decided that I wanted to write a series of humorous spec fic stories that take place at the Canadian National Exhibition. I had been going to the Ex since I was a kid and continue to have a lot of fondness for the annual fair. Within four months, I had written 10 stories, 9 short stories and a novella, comprised of 81,000 words, which exceeds my threshold for a book. I have two more ideas for stories, which I may get to at some point, but I am satisfied with the project for the time being.
After that, I decided to complete the Alternate Reality News Service book I had been working on. Ordinarily, I write these articles on a weekly basis, but the project had been dragging on since the end of the Idiotocracy series, so I decided to approach it the same way I approach writing more traditional fiction: working every day until the work was finished. I wrote the final 30 (of 80) articles I needed to complete that book. (It didn’t hurt that I was inspired by all the AI-related news currently circulating in the media.) My Web Goddess and I are working on a cover for the book; I hope to self-publish When the Soft Sciences Get Positively Runny in the next week or two.
And, of course, I have had to continue to write the weekly satirical articles for my web site, Les Pages aux Folles (other than the ARNS articles).
After suffering from depression for the last couple of years, this burst of creativity feels really good.