Huh?

No, that’s not a mangling of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.’ That’s just what May looks like for me.

While enjoyable, May is a roiling storm of activity for me every year. There’s a lot of vacation prep, a lot of birthdays and a lot of getting out into the world after being pent up all goddamned winter.  Hopefully it will also see the completion of my novel’s first draft this year. It’s a distinct possibility with only 28K words remaining to target. I haven’t put up an excerpt from my novel in progress lately, but should have something copy-pasted into that section soon. Jah’bran however has taken up residence in my mind, as has the land of Ossua, for which this site is named. While I’d love to get back to my gritty, paranormal story of magical life on the streets of Philadelphia (the one put on hiatus by my present efforts), there’s something about the shadows of Jah’bran which seems like it has potential.

The problem I suspect I’ll get into with Jah’bran is making the people and stories in it. Environments just come to me seemingly from nowhere. They develop intricacies like factionalism, organized crime, secret societies and political movements. People often don’t coalesce as well. They get there, but they grow more slowly. Cities and places just set down roots and almost grow of their own accord.