Michael Leask

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and having only one post doesn’t entail that I’m actively writing. I am, by the way. I am working on a new novel. More about that later. I guess in this blog, I wanted to write what is an expectation when an audience reads my blogs or comes to my site.

This is my author site, and it shouldn’t have to be said, but these blogs are my opinions and thoughts. I also shouldn’t have to say that if you want to comment, do so respectfully. Come on, in Kindergarten, we learned if you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all. There is enough shit happening in the news and in the world. The thing with shit, when you focus on it, that smell lingers.

Okay, bold statement… or not. I want my blogs to be positive pieces, at least until I feel more comfortable sharing other topics. It helps with my sanity, and I think it helps the audience.

On the other hand, when I post them here, my stories may be dark, depressing, violent, and cursive. It’s a story. That is all. I hope you like what I post, and if you want to have a discussion, please leave a comment, but if you’re going to come to tell me off, or put me down, then ask yourself, what good is that going to do? It will not make me a better writer; it’s certainly not going to warp or change my mind to adopt what you’re thinking. If you leave intentionally disruptive comments, I won’t hesitate to delete them. Move on.

Now enough about my statement of intent and more about my new book! I finished a science fiction writing course at the end of last year.

(Hey, if you’re a writer, why are you going to school now? Aren’t you contradicting yourself?)

Thanks for the interruption, inner voice. I take these courses to be a better writer than I was a year ago and so forth. As writers, and just like any profession or person, you never stop learning.

Anyways, at the end of last year, I workshopped an exciting science fiction story. Its premise was about an exoplanet that comes into our solar system as a Near-Earth Object (NEO). My novel focuses on a few characters and our world’s experience with a celestial body with enough gravity to affect our home. It’s a character-driven plot, but I keep getting more lethargic towards it as I sit down to write it. Don’t get me wrong, I think it will be a fantastic story, and I am excited to tell it, but another story is at the back of my mind.

It’s called A Way Home. I also workshopped this story in another class, and I’ve been yearning to write it for a while. It’s about a prospecting and mining ship that crash-lands on a planet that could make them rich, but the survivors can’t leave. They’re stuck there for a decade, giving up on the idea of going when a stranger arrives and tells them he found a Star Drive, an engine for their way home.

I’m really excited to tell this story. It’s a sci-fi adventure, and one that I hope is a real page-turner with drama, laughs and tears. I’ve written the first act very roughly, and it is over 30K words. I’m editing it to get a better flow of the story and set straight the lore, names and places of people before it gets too confusing by the middle or end of the book.

I hope to write more about its progress soon.

Thanks for visiting, and I’ll be back soon with more thoughts.

Mike