Fiction always simplifies reality, in an attempt to make sense of it. It doesn’t work, of course. Reality is much too large for us to encompass; we can only create snapshots of it to puzzle over later.
In other news, 26,000 words into the novel-in-progress, and churning along.
I've been plugging away at the novel-in-progress, THE COMPLETE BREATH, finishing the first section (or 'posture') and 19,190 good words. This first section climaxed with the passage of Hurricane Matthew, mentioned in the last post. As with ASANAS, to which this is a sequel, each section is named for a yoga posture, the first being pranayama, the breath.
Section two will begin with the season-opening show at our protagonist's art gallery. The season, with it being Florida, essentially running from mid-Autumn to around Easter. Plenty can happen in the weeks and months to come. Deaths, love affairs, and the infamous 2016 election. I'll see where it all carries me.
As I got into my current novel-in-progress, I decided I should do a little research on events that occurred in the same time period (Fall and Winter of 2016, as it stands at the moment. It may or may not carry over into the next year.). That turned out to be a good thing, as a major hurricane, Matthew, slammed Florida around the time I intended to send my two protagonists on a weekend jaunt to the Atlantic coast.
But that trip was to be a few days earlier, essentially the preceding weekend, so they suffered no bad weather. It did provide a topic of concern and conversation, and added interest to their visit.
It added even more interest to the week following as many hatches were battened! Although Matthew had no great impact on the Gulf coast where the story is centered, it was enough to give me a minor climax to finish out the first section (of four) of the story. And it provided all sorts of possibilities for what will follow; that part of the novel might have become pretty dull without the storm, and maybe a tad directionless.
In other words, Matthew was just what I needed. It was a good thing I decided on a little research, possibly for nothing more than to provide a detail or two.
The 2017 poetry collection, 'Sunshine Land,' has largely been assembled in terms of choosing pieces and getting them into proper order. This includes much of the formatting for the print edition. EPUB and PDF versions in time; there is no great hurry as the release date will be in April. This book contains poems from different times in my career. Some are songs. Several are about Florida, hence the title.
I am also churning away on a novel, almost certainly to be titled 'The Complete Breath.' This would be 'contemporary realism' and a sequel to 'Asanas.' Not that it needed one; 'Asanas' holds up perfectly well as a stand-alone work. Still fairly early in the process and just short of 20,000 words at the moment. I'll try to keep an update going here.
And I am going to use this blog more for that sort of thing. I fully intend to finally divest myself entirely of any involvement with Meta. I've already left Instagram and Threads, and Face Book is going to follow. Soon. I've never felt it a particular good place to promote myself and prefer to concentrate on Mastodon, Tumblr, Bluesky, Word Press, and even here (Not that Google is perfect and doesn't live up to its promise not to be 'evil' anymore. But Meta truly is evil.).
I may show you some covers for the new books in a while but that will do for now!
Today, June 28, the new Qala fantasy novella is released. Available in print at our Arachis Press store (https://www.lulu.com/shop/stephen-brooke/storm-stone/paperback/product-je2eykk.html) or both print and free ebook editions may be found at arachispress.com
At this writing, we are one week out from the release of 'Storm Stone,' my new fantasy novella. Official release date is June 28 2026 and links to both the print and free ebook editions may be found at Arachis Press (arachispress.com). This is a tale of Qala, the eventual Pirate Queen, when she is a young and rising pirate. That would be somewhat before she appears in 'The Eyes of the Wind' but perhaps a decade after 'The Sword and the City.'
Today we release Stephen Brooke's latest poetry collection, Night Rains. Here's a direct link to the print edition at the retail shop:
https://www.lulu.com/shop/stephen-brooke/night-rains/paperback/product-95wp5rj.html
Or visit Arachis Press (arachispress.com) for both the print and the free ebook editions.
