An even longer time between drinks...

The good news (for me at least!) is that I've been working away at one of my works-in-progress, and have recently finished a fairly decent first draft. This is my Western novel, titled Writ in Blood. I blogged here about my five current WIPs, and mentioned this one's origins in the Tombstone story. I see at the time I was intending to take the characters and story into Alternate Universe territory... In the end I stuck with the canonical story, as it were, while adding in some supernatural and queer elements that can't be found in the historical record. (Or can they?!)

I have more work to do to polish this first draft into something worthwhile, but I have to admit to being rather happy with what's there so far.

Image: "The Horse Rustler" by William Herbert Dunton (source: Wikimedia Commons).

One of the places I'll be listing Writ in Blood when it's available is the new Liminal Fiction site, where you can find "an inclusive library of speculative fiction titles" including fantasy, science fiction, paranormal, and horror.

If you join the LimFic site as a reader at any time, you receive copies of four free books! Pretty awesome, eh?

If you join LimFic during September 2020, these four freebies include a copy of my own novel The Fine Point of His Soul. This is an alternate history tale of the poet John Keats' last few months in Rome, which supposes that the warmer climate did have a beneficial effect on his health - and instead of slowly dying he has an adventure. Keats and his friend Severn are joined by the Shelleys, and of course Byron doesn't want to be left out so he turns up, too, dragging along the longsuffering Fletcher... The poets can't even agree on whether the villain of the piece is an ordinary man, the Devil incarnate, or Dionysius - so how exactly are they meant to work against him? The question becomes desperately urgent as even our heroes begin to succumb to the villain's insidious plans...

You probably won't be surprised to hear that my reading this year has been focused on the Old West. I wasn't expecting to fall in love with or even very much enjoy the novel The Virginian by Owen Wister - but I did, and I fell hard. It's now proudly on my shortlist of Absolute Favourites.

I'm borrowing the following words from my review on Goodreads:

This novel was written in 1902, and while it was a runaway bestseller, it was also considered rather daring. To me it feels so far ahead of its time. It is so free in terms of gender roles. Women can take on masculine roles just as courageously and competently as anyone else. Men can express affection for each other in romantic terms. Indeed, the whole thing can be read as a love letter from the unnamed Narrator to the unnamed Virginian (both men), and the Narrator often remarks on the Virginian's myriad attractions.

The prose is lightly and clearly written - so easy to read, and a perfect match for what Struthers Burt (in the Introduction) describes as "the spacious and lucid country" in which the story is set. There is no shrinking from the realities of sex or violence, but these matters are talked of both delicately and directly - not at all squeamishly - and this is perhaps part of what made the novel so daring.

All these things are wonderful - so wonderful, even today! But what really makes this novel so awesome is the wisdom and clarity with which the author writes about emotions. Complexities are explored, and at times conveyed in a few elegant, honest words that get right to the heart of the matter.

Highly recommended!