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Winter’s Chill

Today’s a great day to kick back and take a deep breath.

Happy Wife ⚭ Happy Life

A happy life is one spent in learning, earning, and yearning. ~Lillian Gish

Sleeping in is fun unless you can’t sleep because you’ve got things to do.

Well, at least somebody’s happy…

Me? I’m just busy.

Learning

I’ve been enjoying the Brandon Sanderson series that I linked in a previous post. As he says, take what works for you and discard the rest.

Earning

The work situation has been a bit hectic because I have been suffering from some kind of nasty illness the last week or so. If I can put a little extra effort into catching up on sleep and relaxation, I think I can start next week a bit more refreshed and functional.

Yearning

I’m just too damned sick and tired to be seriously yearning for anything right now.

I just don’t fucking care.

I have been feeling some minor tugs at my need for creative expression as I listen to the aforementioned writing series and things are starting to bubble up from my subconscious into notions of how I ought to handle things that have thwarted me in previous tries at the Sentinels series. More on that below…

Banjomania

Deliverance • Dueling Banjos • Arthur Smith

This is generally what people think of when you say 🪕 banjo 🪕, but the association of banjos with rapacious hillbillies is largely unfair.

Mean Mary – dueling banjo and guitar song Joy

A skilled musician can redeem nearly any instrument but I don’t think the banjo needs much redemption. It is inherently an awesome instrument and, as you can see, a banjo enthusiast can create some seriously badass music.

Roy Clark & Buck Trent – “Dueling Banjos”

It certainly seems like a niche instrument, suitable only for hicks and hillbillies, but I think that’s a genuinely unfair categorization. Banjo music has a built-in complexity that would appeal to fair-minded people in search of an enjoyable piece of music. It reminds me, to a certain extent, of Sitar music. Hmm, I’ll have to find some playlists…

Mean Mary playing fast banjo

Urban Fantasy

A city is a crazy concrete jungle whose people at the end of each day somehow make a small step ahead against terrible odds. ~Herb Caen

So, the place my mind has been returning to is Empire City where the Sentinels reside. Partly, this is because it’s also the world where my Holiday Season Serial Romances take place. Partly, it’s because I’m still on a superhero kick.

I’m drawn to the superhero, sword & sorcery and space opera genres in general but I’m still on a superhero kick for the time being.

Since the Sentinels play a tangential part in the stories in the Christmas RomComs, they’re currently loaded in my creative queue. Mary Christmas was a supporting character in A Misfit Christmas and HEARTH had a cameo. The villains Hellion and Claw made a brief appearance in All I Want and Jeb mentioned his friendship with Captain Freedom.

To a certain extent, these appearances provide quasi-spoilers for an event that will take place in the first book of the Sentinels series. Of course, that can only happen if I actually get back to writing the thing.

Even so, I’m still feeling pretty ill. I’ve got limited bandwidth until I’ve fully recovered. I’m taking my time and letting it simmer. This approach has rendered some good results so far.

I’m confident that I can get back to a consistent writing schedule in the coming days as the creeping crud that has been plaguing me recently creeps its way on outta here.

The elements I’m playing with revolve around life in Empire City. There’s the city that the average citizen experiences and the seedy criminal underworld. Everybody has an angle. Some people just want to live their lives, pay their bills, watch their TVs and be left alone. Some people want to take a shortcut to comfort. Some people are just wretched. There are people across the spectrum from nice to not.

The thing I’m going for is viewing the same set of events from a variety of points of view because the main character of the series is not so much this hero or that villain but rather The Sentinels as a kind of composite character.

The journey from a Golden Age-style team to a postmodern team is a character arc that appeals to me. I’m hoping it will appeal to others who enjoy the superhero genre. With Marvel continuing to produce new programs and movies as well as all of the content on Disney+, DC’s abortive attempts to try to keep up and with a fair amount of independent superhero content such as The Watchmen, The Umbrella Academy and The Boys, it’s fair to conclude that the superhero genre is one that still holds wide enough appeal to justify writing the series.

The main justification is simply because I want to. The supporting argument is that all of the Marvel, DC and independent superhero stuff coming out suggests that this is a genre with a hungry audience.

As to the specifics of my stories, I’m still trying to get a handle on how functionally immortal power brokers think and operate. The Conclave is still somewhat difficult for me to pin down. Some of these people have been around for over four centuries. So, still working on how to get into their heads.