Blind man’s bluff was a favorite game to play whenever friends or family kids got together. If you’re not familiar with this game, it is tag wearing a blindfold. Someone always wound up hurt, of course, but we played anyway.
When you are small fear takes a back seat to adventure. It’s only when you grow older that the possibility of falling off a horse without a saddle, the insanity of lighting explosives near your fingers on the fourth of July, and suspicion of a carnival ride’s mechanisms occur to you.
I’ve kept my sense of adventure, for the most part. (Mom, if you’re reading this, you might want to skip the next part.) I’ve rafted on a raging river, backpacked into a mountain wilderness, and waded in shark-infested waters.
Why then, do I blanch at socializing with other people?
It’s pathetically true that nowadays an author can’t hide in an ivory tower and write (if one ever could). Never mind the introverted author excuses. There’s a massive online party you are expected to attend.
It’s like everyone is playing blind man’s bluff. It’s fun and a little daring to connect with people we don’t know in person and can’t see apart from how they represent themselves with images consisting of pixels of light.
Am I the only one who finds this strange?
As an author, I wade into the internet waters to friend, like, and follow. Everyone wants to be known, despite the fact that we might not recognize one another if we crossed on the street.
It doesn’t matter. We are human creatures, and so joined. And because of this, I can’t escape that I do care.
I put on the blindfold and join the game.
What I’m Writing Now
Book Projects
Western Historical Fiction
I received an email from my literary agent on Friday asking me if I wanted to submit a proposal for a historical fiction novella collection. There was only one snag: I needed to send my proposal by the end of the weekend, if not sooner.
In a recent Literary Wayfarer journal, The one temptation I can never resist, I mention how much I like challenges. I also expressed the hope that I would give myself more space.
That idea went out the window. I submitted a sample chapter, plot, and proposal within a day and a half. I’ll keep you posted on the outcome. (My agent liked it, anyway.)
Medieval Epic Fantasy
I told you that so I could tell you this without sounding like a slouch. I am down by another two chapters this week, but I still have six chapters before I am finished editing Sojourner, Tales of Faeraven 3. I’m glad I (wisely) refrained from making any projections about completion. I’ll take my own advice this week, also, but my schedule is looking a little better.
Romantic Suspense
I’ve begun working on Deceptive Tide again. the plot was giving me fits, but thankfully I’ve worked that out.
Speedbo
This book-in-a-month competition went by the wayside while I was working on other things, and I’m having to adjust my goal. I won’t complete the entire first draft of Deceptive Tide, book 3 of the Islands of Intrigue: San Juans, but I should still make a lot of progress, God willing.
Creative Worlds of Janalyn Voigt
I added “Story of the Covered Bridge at Knight’s Ferry“ to Western Worlds, a subscriber-only area of the site.
Blogging
For Live Write Breathe, my website for writers, I continued the series on conflict in fiction with Inner Conflict in Fiction. and I released Readership Challenge #6 for subscribers.
