It’s been almost eerie how the wider events of this past week have found echoes in my own working life. On the dark side of things, it’s brought me face to face with the final scenes I had written for next year’s Lockdown.
Not that the book has anything to do with politics (thank goodness), much less with the man who will be occupying the White House during the coming 48 months. And not (sorry) in a way I can explain here, because a) this is a book you won’t see until June, and b) they’re the final scenes: do you really want a spoiler? I will say merely that the book’s key end scene, the one that materialized out of nowhere—
(Indiana Jones’ leap of faith into the abyss)
—to tie together this many-pieced, barely-controlled sprawl of a story that I’ve been niggling at since the day I agreed to write a short story for Lia Matera 16 years ago (“Paleta Man,” in Irreconcilable Differences)—that key scene, written many weeks ago, came into very sharp focus for me during the days following the election. Why the characters’ act matters. What it means, for the characters, for the author, for the reader.
Anyway, it’s been odd and filled with mystery—awesome in the proper sense. And because I’m still working on shaping the book so that ending is both unforeseen and inevitable, you won’t get to look at it for months and months. Sorry.
BUT.
More immediately, and also filled with mystery, thrills, and odd electional reverberations, there’s this:
The Maryorama is finished!
You and I have been building this thing (formerly called Russellscape) since I ran a contest for The Language of Bees, in 2009. And in this, of all years, I am happy to have built a work of community creativity, one that literally brings together a spectrum of people celebrating the characters we adore. The original winning entry in 2009 was by Sara McClelland:
This year’s eight winning panels I announced and showed here yesterday. They join Sara’s panel and 48 others (hmm…) done over the years. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present:
Maryorama
The Travels of Russell & Holmes
(If it’s not embedding here, you can pop over to my YouTube channel.)
What do you think?
Take that, cut-throat divisiveness! A pox on your houses, two-party system! We in the Russell world know what matters, and we get on and do it.
As we will during the 48 months to come.