They say it's your birthday!

So today is actually Arthur Machen's birthday so I probably should have waited to post that drawing of Machen until today. Well, anyway, happy birthday, Arthur! He'd have been 155 today. Machen's work has had a profound impact upon me and my own writing. In fact, I'd say that my top three influences are Machen, Lovecraft and Harlan Ellison.

And it's ironic that it's Machen's birthday today because he's been on my mind a lot this past week and I hadn't even realized his birthday was coming up. Back in 2007, I started to write a novel called The White People which combined Arthur Machen with the case of Jack the Ripper in 1888 London. I'd had the idea for it even earlier when I discovered that not only was Machen alive at the time but he was actually living in London! The story kind of grew from there and it also played into my desire to write the ultimate Jack the Ripper novel that would be absolutely correct in the facts of the case. So many 'Ripper' novels got things wrong that I'd have a hard time finishing many of them. So I started to write this novel.

After about 270 manuscript pages and over 150,000 words, I hit a wall.

I was only about 1/3 of the way through the novel and I couldn't go any further. I knew what was going to happen and why but I just couldn't find my way there so I put it aside. Then I wrote my real 'first' novel, The House of Nodens, and I learned a lot from that.

So here it is, 2016 and I'm thinking about going back and trying to finish that novel again. It means a helluva lot of work. I've got to go back and re-read everything I wrote before (not even editing, just reading) and then plot out what happens next. But, if I buckle down, I probably could finish the book this year.

After almost ten years.

It's been roughly two years since I got blocked on The White People but I'm slowing starting to feel that I'm up for chasing Jack once again.