The long silence is long–and over! My last week, alas, got largely eaten up by the election. I have a bad habit of LOVING watching political turmoil unfold–as a student of history, geopolitics, and the philosophies of governance, the end of the election season basically tripped me for five days. I wound up taking a deep-dive into geopolitics, and then, once I realized my brainspace for writing was completely hosed, I wrenched my research in a direction that proved very profitable for the current writing project.
This series, The Kabrakan Ascendency, is, for me, about exploring the relationships between individuals and history through the lenses of geopolitics and ethics. Not that that’s what necessarily will interest every reader, but that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s one of the reasons I’m holding it with a loose hand as I let it evolved well outside of my original vision. Growing up at the end of the Cold War, witnessing the “End of History,” and now the bumpy process of history getting started again…I could blame my fascination on all those things, but I suspect it has more to do with growing up with a historian in the house.
Either way, I’m having a blast with this. The hardest part, ironically, has been remembering to do these daily posts. Between spending a few hours each day in the booth, doing the Every Day Novelist podcast, trying to get ahead on the Antithesis posdcast again, and getting in enough exercise to stay marginally fit, I’m finding the ends of my days more crowded than they had been.
But, hopefully today will be the start of a new blog streak. There’s something vindicating and satisfying about doing these posts, even when I don’t have much to report.
Today, though, I do. I have MUCH progress to report.
I also have a new bundle active–a nonfiction bundle, especially for those of you who write or want to, and ESPECIALLY for those of you doing NaNoWriMo. This is the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools bundle curated by Kevin J. Anderson, filled to bursting with great books that I’m eating up during my reading hours every day. Great stuff in here, all around–business, craft, and writing discipline tools all. Get it while the getting’s good by clicking here. Name your own price, get some great books and some very cool non-book extras as well.
I’m also up over 26,000 words since my last check-in.
Today I wracked up 5514, bringing my grand total on The Briggs Defection to 36205.
Here’s the progress in graph form:
36,205 / 90000 words
jdsawyer
After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of silicon valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him.
Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past.
To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world.
For news and free stories, sign up for his occasional newsletter. Or find his contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net
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