Too focused to feel guilty

At first I felt guilty for not posting for a year… but looking back, it was in order to focus.

And without that focus, I wouldn’t be telling you what I am about to now.

Many people keep up a regular blog schedule because they truly have exciting things happening left and right—and they somehow find time to write about all of it.

Others fall into the trap of “blog post inflation” (don’t know if that’s a word, but hey). For the sole purpose of achieving slick SEO status or just putting more words on the web, they slave away to find something extraordinary to say every single day (or week), even if nothing truly extraordinary happened. And while this strategy is probably effective for generating more pageviews and growing a larger subscriber list… I have kind of stopped caring.

I’ve stopped caring because I’m too busy making things happen to stop and tell the world about it every week.

That could sound very arrogant, so let me clarify—genuine respect for people who manage to achieve and keep up a regular blog on their progress. That is a skill—and it comes with a lot of hard work (and time) that some people have the capacity for. I’ve just learned over the past year that I don’t.

So with that, here is a quick round-up of the things I am beyond stoked to share with you very soon:

1) The Pawn Shop: a short film

This project deserves a series of its own posts, but here are the spark notes: I made a movie! It shot in October at an antique shop in West Michigan. Three scenes cover a span of ten years, and the consequences of a man’s choices on his family—a topic very close to home for me. Think film noir, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone style. This project is now in post-production, and we are working on raising funds to cover the visual and sound editing work. If you’d like to learn more about the story or if you’d like to support the project, you can check it out here.

2) Bertrand the Bashful Bumblebee: a children’s book

Bertrand was a long time in the editing/illustration process, but he is finally available for purchase! The first print order drops from the press this Tuesday, January 17! Order now to get your copy for the little people in your life!

3) Between the Lines: a 7-part television series

On December 30 of 2022, I finished the first draft of the seventh episode. This is a historical series set in 1640s during the English Civil War, when freedom of speech and press were hotly contested issues. Those who wrote or spoke against the political authorities were imprisoned, and investigations were launched into contraband writers who refused to fall silent. In this story, we follow an obsessive inspector on his hunt for a contraband writer in London. The series is currently undergoing revision, and this summer I will be traveling to the UK to see firsthand the cities and buildings I wrote about—definitely an added bonus. 😊

4) A children’s television show

Although I am not licensed to disclose the title of the show or the name of the studios/networks involved, I will be working with a team of two other writers and a studio to craft and pitch this show to several networks. If we land a good deal, we could go into pre-production by the end of 2023.

Whew! As you can see… it’s been a busy year. 😊

For those of you who read this today (which means you didn’t unsubscribe during my radio silence), I want to say thank you. Thank you for sticking with me and for continuing to work hard on your own projects or blogs. For my fellow writers, I know some of you have been up to some incredibly fulfilling stuff, and I am excited to see your work in print soon! It is an honor to be in the trenches with other creatives out there, all of us putting in the sweat and late nights that it takes to bring our vision into tangible form for other people to see.

In future, I will try not to go a full year without updates! But in the meantime, may the doors continue to open and the adventure continue to grow—and may we all learn from the journey and celebrate the living of it.