State of Affairs July 2020

If you’re here from the forum, hello! Or from Twitter, Google or anywhere else, welcome.

As I write this it’s day 118 in shutdown/quarantine/lockdown in the San Francisco Bay area, and my plans for the years were totally upended. I published a short story in the Further Confusion 2020 conbook (I’ve posted the story here on this site if you’d like to see it) and was aiming to do that at another con this year, as so many had the cyberpunk theme and you need two such publications to get into the Furry Writer’s Guild. But as you know, there doesn’t seem like there will be any cons this year at all. The momentum of “let’s be a furry author!” got totally derailed; I made accounts and even commissioned art for posting various stories on the different sites but it hasn’t happened.

Instead, I’ve been working on what is essentially my trunk novel, tentatively titled Enter Humanity. You can read an (incredibly first draft) query letter-type thing here if you’re interested. I’m roughly halfway done with the first draft. Technically, I wrote the first draft over a decade ago, but I hated it as soon as it was finished because I knew I could do better. After writing many other things and growing as a person, I feel like I can finally do what I’ve wanted to with it. At the pace I’m going hopefully it will be ready to go out for submissions by the end of the year. But if 2020 has taught me anything, it’s not to make plans.

I’m still toying with the idea of doing a serial, which would be called Farwalker Papers, which is the story/journal of Pia, the “author” of Enter Humanity. That might happen while I’m doing the querying/submitting thing. It’ll be quite a different challenge from writing fanfiction and publishing it as I write, and writing a whole novel, but I think it’ll be fun.

In my personal life…well, I’m alive! I’m in physically good health and managing the best I can mentally. I’ve gotten better at cooking (and marginally so at baking) and read/watched a lot of stuff, some of which have really jump-started the creative juices for EH. I still have a job and, as we’re e-commerce, have been doing very well, but there’s still uncertainty involved. I still need the giant clam and a few rare beetles in Animal Crossing for the month of July. I have 1.5 Zoids to build still, plus lots of Wild kits to paint/detail (and photos of everything to take). I’d still like to get posts up about that, I’ve definitely taken the pictures for the next how-to, just need to put it all together.

I hope to make writing these a regular occurrence. See you all soon!

-Chase J