Brief Pose will not be done by June 20th.

If you want something to be good, it often takes as long as it takes.

It is possible Brief Pose could be done on time, but quite a few things could cause that not to happen. I’m not going to sacrifice quality, and I’m not going to let myself off the hook.

Brief Pose is a tricky novel, structurally and thematically, that hits hard on a lot of personal issues of mine. Working on the novel, living in that world of depression and isolation, takes a lot out of me. There is a certain amount of bleeding onto the page that I can’t fake. For the work to be honest, I may need to make breakthroughs in my real life so that I can authentically portray the resolution. It’s not a novel I can just work on, non-stop, until I reach the finish line, like I can with much of my other work.

That is why I am also working on The Queen in Yellow. I can craft self-contained short stories when an idea strikes me and then go back to Brief Pose when I’m in the right frame of mind.

I’ve finished three short stories and I’m working on a few others. I would like to release The Queen in Yellow after I have ten. How long that will take is another mystery.