Thank you to those who worked their ways through this draft of the 3rd volume of my YA trilogy about Victoria Frankenstein. Serializing it helped me see some structural problems, catch some technical errors, etc.
I got the idea for this series in the late 90s. I'd just retired from public school, and, jogging one afternoon, I felt the idea arrive ... how? Who knows?
I finished the first volume in 2013--the second the following year. And now, seven years later, the final one.
I once wrote a post here about why I'm publishing directly to Amazon, and, briefly, here's why: prostate cancer and its aftermath. I feared I had but little time to deal with publishers, etc., and I wanted to get my stuff "out there" while I still had the energy to do so, realizing, of course, that I would have a far smaller audience, far less respect ("He's self-published!"); I would suffer from not having professional help (though Joyce is pretty damn good at editing). But, to me, all of this was worth it.
I have actually carried on far longer than I thought I would (than my oncologists thought I would), but I have now reached the point, in all likelihood, that I am ... done.
My energy has greatly diminished, as has my mental acuity. My fingers don't leap to the correct keys with anything like the accuracy or speed that they used to. I curse a lot. (You know: "Rage, rage against the dying of the light.") Sometimes I can't remember the simplest damn things ...
I am going to continue to write short pieces here for as long as I can--but not every day, not the way I used to. Writing, for me, is therapy. Self-therapy. It helps me expel demons, banish them, for a while, to the page. And so I will continue to practice it.
I think of Edwin Arlington Robinson and John Updike and others who continued writing, even on their very death beds. That's my goal—a dark but somehow comforting one.
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