A New Bloom

My dearest Cavelings — you know I rarely keep secrets from you, but this was a whopper. I am now letting the cat out of the bag …If you have been following along, you may have been reading my responses to the DIY MFA Question of the Week; in most of those posts, I mention that I haven’t been writing as I should, despite having a number of works-in-progress that clamor for my attention every now and again.Such statements are quite true. However, last year was a different story …Here’s what happened (and those who know me, know the first bit here): I am a sold-out Thomas Dolby fan. Have been since first hearing ‘The Flat Earth‘, which made me something of a music nerd I suppose because I fell in love with this album while others were still freaking out over ‘She Blinded Me With Science’. Don’t get me wrong, I adored ‘Science’ as well, more for the storyline than just the catchy beat. Okay, the beat was fabulous as well, but I mean … the story!Fast forward to 2015. I have a whole zillion hours of Mr. Dolby’s music on queue in my Youtube account. As I was doing some work, I heard his 2011 release, ‘A Map of the Floating City‘. I liked the tunes therein and put it on repeat. Somewhere along the way, the ‘Road to Reno’ storyline penetrated my brain. I replayed it a few times. I moved on to ’17 Hills’ and the same thing happened. Shortly thereafter, I stopped the other work altogether and listened to each song with eyes closed.There’s a story in here …Well, of course, silly head! This is the work of Mr. Thomas Dolby! When is there not a story in his work?But wait … I meant something else. A novel began to unravel itself. I reached out to a colleague and asked if there might be interest in publishing a work based on ‘Map’; oh, wise sage that he is, said colleague asked, ‘Sounds interesting, but does Mr. Dolby know what you are doing with his material?’Ah ha!Off I dashed to locate contact information … a few emails later and I had secured permission to develop my story.The result was titled ‘Life in the Floating City’ and I was quite happy with it once finished. The colleague I contacted at first was unable to work with me (my genre is not in his wheelhouse), but I found the ever-wonderful Black Bedsheet Books! This link will take you to the Facebook page, where you can get a quick snippet of the sorts of things Nick Grabowski, Editor, takes in. I fell for BBS when I realized the definitive Vincent Price bio was published here. How could I not submit a query? To have my text listed in a catalogue where Mr. Price appears as well? Now that’s golden.I have, in the past, written about some of my characters to give hints about upcoming releases, but I wanted to hold this one close to the vest until more information was available. However, I’ve decided to maintain the mystery … keep watching this Cave for more about the actual launch date. In the meantime, here’s a teaser:Oh! And before we part, a major thanks to my friends at the San Bernardino Inlandia Writer’s Group. Heather: you get top bill in the front matter because your ‘Leonard’ gave me the courage to do this full on.