Running Deep

So I'm running quiet at the moment and have stepped away from social media. In truth, my anxiety is playing up, as a result of a number of things (the world apparently going to hell in a handbasket isn't helping, either politically, economically or in terms of our environment). I'm also just feeling tired of the sheer weight of humanity at the moment, social media is great in some ways but at the same time it feels very needy, very much like it's just people shouting out 'look at me, look at me'. I've done that too, of course, and grown tired of feeling like it's all I do. Even this blog feels a little like that. I'm tired, too, of feeling like I'm always in the wrong (which I realise is a) a sign that my anxiety is playing up and b) that I'm probably just being a massive child).


Anyway, the long and short of it is that I'm stepping away, shutting down my world a little to focus on things that I hope will make me happier and healthier. At present that means writing a novel, an urban fantasy piece set in Birmingham and focusing on a set of 'gutter mages'* - magical practitioners who use their own idiosyncratic styles of sorcery. I've had a blast writing the characters so far and very much enjoy looking at the city I live in and finding magic or things I can make magic, lying there under the surface of the city. The first short story is ready to go out and one thing I'll do today is looking for a publisher for it.

I'm also working on a few other things, a cyberpunk story for an anthology (which I hope will be accepted), a Musketeer story, and a few other things that I'm not really up to talking about at the moment.

I'll post updates when I have news, of course (and links and stuff).

Mostly, I'm just hiding from the world, though.

*A term I'm using because I dislike 'wizard' s a word, for reasons I don't fully fathom.