Hey.... remember me?
I'm still alive!
More importantly, I'm still writing. It's been... wow, like, eight years since The Color of Darkness was published. Many of you might have noticed my struggle to put out another work that I felt was worth reading; I can't count how many times I stopped and started a few of the same stories, hoping something would stick. Well, here's the thing: my writing heart demands authenticity as much as it demands quality. I simply can't fake my writing material, and when the story feels like some caricature of itself, the challenge of continuing is, frankly, insurmountable.
Wend i started writing TCOD over a decade ago, I thought I know things about life; looking back, I can only scoff. I was seventeen and barely knew how to have a real, conversation. Sometimes I can't help but feel like an absurd fraud for my novel having apparently affected so many of you in such a positive way. I appreciate each and every one of you that took the time to ingest my words; I didn't know it at the time, but I was writing my way out of a confusing and conflicted childhood. Shouting into the void was simply part of that journey.
Here we are, ten years later and it's impossible to properly express everything that has happened in-between. I've lived highs and lows, terrors and thrills. I've known love and loss, and watched the sun blossom in the east and sink in the west in ways I didn't know were possible. Part of that growth was learning to grapple with the ghosts inside my head, the ones I insisted didn't actually exist.
The reason I'm telling you this is because the culmination of the last decade of victory and failure has finally manifested itself inside my mind in a way that I can put on paper. I apologize once again for not finishing the half-dozen or so previous writing projects that I've undertaken since TCOD was published.
Some of you may remember my work titled "From: Lost To: The Universe;" I couldn't even guess which of the many versions I had last posted here on Penana. But, wonderfully and dreadfully, I have been slowly beginning to compile the past decade into a volume by that same title. It's raw. It's honest. It's difficult. It's beautiful, and the feeling of dropping this baggage on the page once again is uplifting in a way that I can hardly describe.
The reason I'm posting here is because I'll begin posting the latest update of my novel here as I complete it. Honestly, I don't even know if anyone cares. But, on the off chance that anyone reads this, I can assure you that this one is good. Think: TCOD on steroids.
So, anyway, because I don't know how to end this tirade, I'll leave you with a Twain quote that I'm sure will inevitably park itself in my novel somewhere:
"Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us, and unriddle many riddles."
-AK
@Penana
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