Getting to Work in 2021

Started February 2021 off and running with another Patreon entry, "Gazetteer of Aanuu Part 3." Reviewing my many old notes, some written in college, I really did feel the "secondary world" I was winnowing out of old myths, legends and Greco-Roman classics was more than just a backdrop for board games, stories and novels. Was it -- REAL?!!? Maybe not, but if Plato can give us Atlantis, Herodotus Hyperborea and the Rhipaean Mountains, Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, "Magonia, whence ships sail in the clouds," Sir John Mandeville Natumeran where "men and women . . . have heads like dogs, and they are called Cynocephales", and Pliny the Elder "the cavern which is called ‘the North Wind’s Cave’ -- the place named Ges clithron," the least I can do is put them in a gazetteer!

And as usual, I either have no urge to do anything or I try to do everything at once: for the anthology "Classic Monsters Unleashed" I'm trying for a Frankenstein and/or Phantom of the Opera story; I paused on "A Kingdom of Children" to work on a new novelette about the Gryphons of the Great Eyrie, and I finally wrote past the "hard part" of "Kingdom", which I've been leery of reaching for ten years now.

Moving my many books around out in the barn [where sadly most must remain for the foreseeable future], I'm reminded of my desire to write dictionaries/ encyclopedias/ guides to certain authors and series. I'd like to write a dictionary of the names, places, worlds and series of Andre Norton -- and for the fantasy tales of Manly Wade Wellman -- and of Lovecraft/the Cthulhu Mythos (though there are at least two of those already) and of the tales of H. G. Wells (though there's one of those out there, at least). Is that enough on my plate? I suppose. Now if I can just type everything into the computer!