A year ago, I had just returned from travels abroad, during which I had diligently blogged and sketched my way through Spain, France and Nepal. Realizing that my journey is not just about travel, I am declaring a resumption of the blog, to include at least occasional sketches and artworks. The new blog title – “Simulacrum” – is meant to convey something about my intention to write and draw and paint in ways that will evoke, however imperfectly, something nearly true about this world we share.

The novel I have recently completed – Way of the Serpent – is a work of “speculative fiction”, akin to science fiction but without the space aliens and mutant beasts. It takes place barely more than 100 years in the future, and my protagonist and friends are only too human. I say the novel is “completed”, but hesitate to use the word “finished,” as that would imply it has reached a state of such perfection that no further tinkering is permitted. I reserve the right to tinker.

There is a second novel in the works – The Fourth Time. It takes place in the here and now… sort of. My protagonist in this one is an archaeologist married to an author who writes about time travel, and much of the action takes place in Belize, a country I have known since my earliest anthropological fieldwork in the 1970s. This one is about 30,000 words to date.

And then there is the germination of a sequel to Way of the Serpent, which I am provisionally calling Flight of the Owl. It will follow the experiences of one of the survivors of Serpent. This one frightens me a little bit, but I’ll get over it and get into it soon enough.

(NOTE: I have just reposted some of my sketches from last year that I was unable to properly blog from Nepal due to technical difficulties.)