A knock on the door

“Feed me!” says the creative urge. “I need a dragon quest, or a search for a golden egg, or something.”

“How about a poem?” I ask.

“Pshaw, a snack,” it cries.

“I could scratch out a song,” I offer.

“I suppose.”

“How about a tasty blog post?”

“Boring! You do that all the time.”

“All right.” I take a deep breath. “It’s a bitter cold day in outer space. Ice would form instantly on the windows, except there’s no water out there. Suddenly they hear a knock on the door.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Well, the explorers.”

“What are they exploring?”

“Outer space. Duh!”

“Yes, but why?”

“To see what’s out there. Plus, there’s some disaster going on back on Earth, and a message was sent from this area of space saying the answer is out here.”

“Better. Go on,” the creative urge urges.

“Well, one explorer says to the other, ‘Holy moly, what was that?’ He’s the Dudley Do-Right character who’s in love with the lady scientist, but she likes the bad boy pilot. It’s the sweet botanist, who keeps the plants alive and supplying oxygen, who loves Dudley. It’s a tangled web.”

“Silly and distracting. What about the knock on the door?”

“They turn on the external cameras, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone or anything out there, but the knock comes again.”

“Go on.”

“An ethereal something seeps through the door and stands there, glowing, in front of them.”

“How did it knock if it’s ethereal?”

“It just knows how to do these things.”

“Someone’s going to ask.”

“Fine. It can make itself partly solid long enough to pick up things or knock on doors.”

“How did it know that humans have a custom of knocking on doors?”

“Oh, good heavens! Don’t you know anything about suspension of disbelief?”

“I don’t believe that’s really a thing.”

I stop and stare at the creative urge. Then I look more carefully.

“Why, you’re not the creative urge at all. You’re the self-editor! Shoo! Shoo!”

“Ah, you’re just a hack and a pretender anyway,” the self-editor scowls as it rushes away.

The creative urge walks into the room, yawning.

“That was a great nap,” it says. “What did I miss?”

“Well, this ethereal something-or-other just entered the space ship and was about to introduce itself and explain about the disaster back on Earth that led to this mission.”

“I love missions into space to save the world!”

“Me, too,” says I. “So you won’t believe what happens next.”

“Try me,” says the real creative urge.

How different worlds work

I opened the patio door to let Dejah out, and Summer held back, so I slid the door shut and opened it again. Sure enough, this time Summer stepped out onto the deck and down the steps to the yard.

“Does she think she’s going out into a different world than Dejah, only five seconds later?” I mused.

“That’s exactly what she’s doing,” said Seth, the dragon who watches over our land. “Haven’t you ever let them out separately like this, and when it’s time to bring them in, you can only see one of them?”

“Sure,” I said. “She’s out of sight under the deck or behind some tall weeds.”

“Is that what you think?” Seth said. “No, the other world has to catch up to us. That’s when you see her again.”

Summer looks up at us, and although it is not the Time of Magic and I can’t understand anything she might say, I can tell that she believes Seth is correct.

“How is it, then, that when they go out separately, I can still see both of them, if they’re in different worlds or dimensions?”

Seth sighs as if trying to explain the universe to a particularly confused child.

“You have a bond with each of them, and so you can see them both. The worlds aren’t that far apart in the grand scheme of things.”

I thought about that for a moment.

“The world is more complicated than I realized,” I said.

“Nope,” the big dragon said. “It’s simpler.”

“Really? How do you mean?”

“You love these two goofy animals, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then, if you’re within your line of sight, you can see them, whatever world they happen to be in.”

“You just said that sometimes you can’t see one until the other world catches up.”

“Oh, well, that’s a time displacement thing, not a world thing,” Seth said.

I looked at him askance. “You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?”

“No! I —” said the dragon, but then he sighed. “Yes. I have no idea how all this works.”

“Woof!” cried Summer, and I could swear she was laughing at us.

– – – – –

Read more about Dejah, Summer, Seth the dragon, and a host of other characters in Dejah & Summer in the Time of Magic, available where all good books are sold or right here.

A somewhat lengthy explanation of how I might accomplish a ridiculous goal in 2025

For some time now, I have approached each new year saying, “This shall be the year I publish a book every month!” I published only two books in 2024, but in my humble opinion they were doozies — Dejah & Summer in the Time of Magic, my October instant adventure, and A Declaration of Peace aka War IS the Crime. The new title fits what I hoped to accomplish better, and the new cover is prettier, but I guess I still don’t expect it to be a best seller, although I hope and pray its philosophy will someday be more universal.

If I published 12 books in 2025, what would they be? It would presumptuous to list the full dozen — circumstances change and inspiration usurps expectations — for the first three quarters of 2024, I had no inkling that I might write and publish a fantasy about my golden retrievers, after all.

But if I had a guess, the books most likely to be published under my name in 2025 are:

1. Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus — I have been writing this novel in fits and spurts for nigh on five years, and it is so close to the finish line that I felt like I could wrap it up in a week. The thing is, that particular week has’t arrived in close to a year. I wonder if the reader will be able to detect which parts were written in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, and how much of the last part was written in a 2025 burst of creativity?

2. See the World — I thought my post of that title would make a lovely opening to a book about paying attention to the wonders around us at any given moment — and we are given so many moments every day! — so I have been slowly collecting posts along that theme. As of today it’s a small collection, but it’s almost big enough to be a short book. I would not be surprised to reach the tipping point to comprise a volume in 2025.

3. Write Anything Until You Write Something — I’ve written plenty of times over the years about the art and craft of writing to the point where I could publish a disorganized but book-length collection of essays tomorrow. Two things hold me back: First, they really do need to be organized in some semblance of order. Second: Imposter Syndrome. Many writers who are better and more successful than I have written better and more successful books about writing. Who am I to presume I have anything worthwhile to add on the subject? Fortunately, the first obstacle is more powerful than the second, and so this is the most likely prospective book on this list to see the light of day.

4. No Chance to Dream — Back in 2018 (!?!) I wrote the first chapter of a fantasy detective story featuring the team of Adam Comfort, a rumpled human private detective, and Joy Emerson, a pookha who takes the form of a 6-foot-high skunk on two legs. Then I wrote six more chapters during NaNoWriMo 2019. I stumbled into Resistance when I couldn’t decide whether to determine whodunit before continuing to write or just continue romping along until the answer presented itself. Maybe 2025 is the year I decide.

5. The Girl, The Alien, and Me — Much like Dejah & Summer in the Time of Magic, in 2017 (!!!??!!) I wrote 10 blog posts that could be the first 10 chapters in a novel narrated by Hank Stiller, who meets a winsome young woman who seeks his help in a struggle against, well, Martians. The narrative stopped cold after I found myself killing off a character I really liked. The decision here is whether to go back and write earlier chapters to flesh out the character so the reader really feels the loss, go back and rewrite so he’s only injured and doesn’t die, or suck it up and continue the story after his death. (And as I’m writing this I suddenly OMG thought of a fourth alternative that might be The Answer.)

6-7-8. Myke Phoenix — This might be cheating, but my thickest book is Myke Phoenix: The Complete Novelettes, 700 pages compiling the 16 novelettes and two short stories I wrote over the years about the guardian of Astor City. If I broke them up into three volumes of five or six novelettes each, that could technically be the sixth, seventh and eighth editions in my challenge to publish 12 books during 2025.

9. I have written enough poems to produce a small book of poetry. Whether they’re any good is another story.

10. I have written enough short stories to make a small anthology. Again, I’ve only written a handful that make me think, “Yes. I’m glad I wrote that.”

11. Oh! I almost forgot that I have enough flash fiction to expand my soon-to-be-out-of-print volume 24 flashes and produce 96 flashes. Actually the only obstacle here is whether there’s a better title than 96 flashes, or I could have published it yesterday.

• So there are 11 ideas for books I could publish in 2025. Surely a 12th will occur to me by next Dec. 31.

What the heck. I accept the challenge.