I do plan to return to regular posts here, though my writing time lately has been taken up with novel work. It occupies most of my thoughts even when I'm not writing, which I suppose is a good sign, but it leaves little time for writing about movies or Jane Austen.
To integrate my worlds a little bit, I'm going to start sharing my scrapbook: snippets from the books, songs, films, history, poetry and artwork that are swirling around my head as I construct this behemoth. This project, when it is (if I have any good luck) completed, will be a fantasy/horror novel for young adults, but it is also about: witches, cities, immigration, class, the uses and misuses of nature, isolation, sisters, mothers, growing up, and werewolves. More than anything though, it's about stories: why we need to tell them, why we avoid telling them, and how they can save us.
Many of the pieces in this scrapbook are a part of deliberate research on my part; many more are not. I won't include much in the way of explanation, though they may form a coherent whole at some later point. If I am a part of all that I have met, then surely all I have met must be a part of me and what I make. The novel is also about this.