Reflections

Its a beautiful autumn morning. It is cool outside, it is quiet, and I am reminded once again how I love this time of year. The sun seems to warm instead of overheat. The air is cool and clean. People come outside of their homes where they had been hiding behind air conditioners and cold drinks. You can hear children's playful laughter echo from the trees. It is peaceful. Only slightly less peaceful then the onset of winter. You can enjoy yourself outside. You feel like grilling steaks, backpacking through the woods, and talking with old friends.

It is this time of year, whether I like it or not, where I sit and reflect upon everything in my life: Where I have come from and where I am going. Autumn is such a wonderful staging point for these thoughts. I am sitting here enjoying all of this as I smoke a pipe of peach tobacco before breakfast.

I think about my work as well. There has been much that I have written, and yet have not had the guts to really try to publish. Going back over my work "Ending the Ephemeral" I can see how much my writing style has changed. Briefly, I have looked over some of my past works like "Ancient of Days" and can see the stark contrast in my writing. I have matured a lot since I wrote those.

So, now I feel a sense of nostalgia, and at the same time I feel like I have received something new. It has been fun editing "Ending the Ephemeral" so far. There have been some challenges in what I wanted to change, but for the most part, it has been fun.

I have rewritten the beginning for some clarity and background, and I have gone through the first twenty pages of my book and have edited them. It amazed me how much repetition I had put into the book. Of course, that was easy to cut out. Also, when I first wrote the book I was not sure of the entire story, and now that I know the story from beginning to end it is easier to direct the story and cut out some of the fat.

If I keep going at this rate I should be done with editing it in a month or so, my current work allowing, and by that time I hope to have one last editing run through before presenting it to the publishers. The only thing after that is to secure funds so that I can have a professional edit it and then get it published.

I am still speaking with a few artists about coverart, but I have not heard anything committal. If I do not hear from them before I decide to go to print I might have to work with the publisher's artists which means I will have less control over the coverart. We will see.

At any rate, my pipe is almost finished, and I am getting hungry.