Where I am up to?

This is as much for me, Dear Reader, as for you, if not more so, to try to write down, somewhere, exactly where I am up to at this moment with a view to eventually making progress. The first watchword is - no promises! I am not going to promise to do anything, ever again. Not in the literary world, anyway.

I am pleased to say the Black Dog has buggered off completely for the time being, and what is delaying me is 'other business'. You see I do have other interests and, dare I say it, family responsibilities. But if I really wanted to write, I expect I could squeeze some effort in somewhere. The truth is I don't - yet. This is a strange state of affairs for me, who started to write stories when I was about 15 and spent many, many years fruitlessly hammering keyboards. But there you are.

Blogging - I am trying to do at least one blog post a month, but not necessarily here. Please don't hold your breath, especially not for anything to happen over at The Yorkist Age.

Projects

Alianore II - sort of in hand. Some progress made but I am not really in the right mood for comedy just now. I have reasonable hope of finishing this at some point, in fact to the extent that I am giving anything priority, Alianore is getting it.

This New Spring of Time - a decent chunk has been written. A very young Edward of York has met Philippa Mohun for the first time and they are already up to mischief. However, the political stuff is dead complex and untangling it and making it palatable to a sane reader of fiction is hard work. It might get finished but it could be some time. One problem is that although I have a lot of sympathy for Richard II, the truth is that as a young man he was a thoroughly annoying git. (Weren't we all?)  His enemies though were unmitigated villains, and I struggle to find anything nice at all to say about Gloucester and Arundel. Possibly their mothers and Jesus loved them, but I can't imagine that anyone else did.  (Warwick wasn't quite so bad.) This offends my sense of balance. I have never liked white hat/black hat stories. If I'm honest, the person I admire most in this specific era is Edmund of Langley. He may have been a fool, but at least he didn't set out to murder people who were in his way.

Richard III - I have lost count of the versions I have attempted and discarded. Probably adds up in total to about three short novels, some bits of which I had the gall to publish in The Open Fetterlock. Bottom line is, I am not really satisfied with any of it. I have a vision in my head that I can't match on paper, or even in computer bytes. Frustrating, I know. Might end up as two novels, one about the Talbot sisters, one from the POV of Francis Lovel. I am saying this because the elements concerned are the bits saved from the skip that I am most happy about.

Other Stuff - I am trying to not get involved in anything else. There are other stories I want to tell, and I do from time to time make the odd note about them or do a small piece of research, but the plain truth is I probably won't live long enough.

Not a pretty picture is it? I am tempted to give up, but I'm too damned stubborn.