Louis Is In The Building.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved

I have abandoned several stories in the last week or ten days. It's clear that I am floundering. Wallowing, even. Ideas are sometimes hard to come by, and I don't necessarily delete these things, but they are essentially spiked. I have abandoned, 'Home to Ithaca,' and the western, and something else...whatever.

To write sci-fi, and then detective fiction, and then horror, and then try a western is not a bad thing as far as it goes, but it lacks focus. When I submitted the detective story, I seriously worried about what might happen if it was accepted.

What would I think? What would I do then?

Somehow I have managed to weasel my way into the sci-fi building, through a basement window. The glass was cracked, the putty was missing in places, and the latch no good, I guess you could say.

But I am in the building.

While the training in spec-fic certainly has not harmed me, to try to learn another genre right from the ground up would take time.

As for the western, 'Guns at Mule Creek,' by 'Gus Whittaker,' (or 'whatever') it has its allure. But I would be bringing nothing new to the genre. I'm sure I could pulp out 75,000 words.

More than anything else, I am tired, oh, so tired. With four e-books out there and twenty or so stories to show for it, I guess I have a right. It has been a good year.

While I have earned a rest, I also don't know what to do next, and that is sheer hell!