“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
— Anais Nin

Been back home for a week or so — well, going on two weeks now — and I’ve been following up with the handful of contacts, leads, and introductions I made while at the BookExpo America.

Apart from some good connections, the only other notable thing to come out of the trip was that I started writing the next project, my third novel. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you might have noticed more references to gods than usual. You might as well settle in and get used to it, because that’s what the new project is about.

It’s a bit of a shift, really. I’d had another project planned and plotted, ready to start writing . . . but it just wasn’t there yet. Anything I did felt forced somehow. After a few weeks of working but not feeling it, I decided to set it aside and let my subconscious work on it a bit more.

It wasn’t the project’s fault. There was something off in me and I just couldn’t get in the right position to flip the switch.

If the other project felt forced and difficult, digging out our old notes and sketches was like coming home . . . and I’ve already slid into the work with a sigh of relief.

Who knows, maybe in a few years I’ll come back to the other project and find it’s right there, ready to go.

The second project — the new project, the god project — was one from five years ago that was originally meant to be a collaboration with the excellent Keeley Geary (now my most excellent wife). Although she’s graciously relinquished the story and characters into my hands, I expect she’ll still be involved in the plotting and development process — if for no other reason than I’ll keep asking her annoying questions and trying out ideas on her.

LaDawn Driscoll (a new Twitter friend) recently twittered the quote from Anais Nin above, which serves as a perfect compliment to this one from Homer’s The Odyssey: “For the gods are never strangers when they meet…”

Taken together, Homer and Nin do a pretty good job of summing up where Keeley and I started with this new story, way back when.

I’m not in a position to say much more about the new project just yet, but suffice it to say that I’ve got a lot of writing ahead of me.

And I’m looking forward to it.