I started the blog you are reading on the twenty-ninth of August, 2015. I took a hiatus in 2020, because of covid. Here is what I said that day.

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Yesterday, here in California, the Governor requested that all people over 65 self-isolate. That makes sense to me, and I passed that milestone seven years ago, so my wife and I are going to hunker down and become temporary hermits. That isn’t too much of a hardship since we live in the country and keep a well stocked larder anyway.

This change shouldn’t bother my blog, but it does. I’m not worried for my wife and myself, but worrying about the rest of the country and the world beyond weighs on me. It has also been getting harder lately to come up with new things to say, especially on subjects that don’t call for hours of research for a post that will be read in three minutes. This is post 678, after all.

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Actually, A Writing Life had more than 678 posts. From day one it was a double effort, a website called A Writing Life with almost daily entries in a blog of the same name (causing some confusion) and a secondary blog on the same website called Serial which provided many of my fiction writings in serial form.

According to WordPress who handles my blog and keeps track of such things, I had 1280 posts when I restarted this blog.

During the hiatus, seven posts trickled through, so make that 1273 posts in less than five years. I know I was working my tail off during that period, but it still boggles my mind.

I made a lot of friends during that period, but after six years off most of them probably don’t even know I’m still alive.

I am.

I disappeared but I never went away. During those years I finally put the last period on a five book series of novels I have been working on since 1972 called The Menhir Series (fantasy). I completed two new novels The Cost of Empire (alternate universe) and Like Clockwork (time travel), and am fighting with another called Dreamsinger, a sideways sequel to Cyan which won’t quite come to heel yet.

You will be seeing all my works, old and new, in e-book format in the next few years. The Cost of Empire and Like Clockwork won’t be published for a while, so I won’t name their release dates. Too many possibilities lie between now and then.