[Update - Swimming in bollocks]

You know how someone always makes that one last post, where they apologize for their absence, where they say, "from now on things will be different," and then they never post again? I'm not going to bother with that. I've only swung by blogspot while I set up a personal project, and figured I'd leave a hey-hiyo.

Things have been working well since I left my most recent job. I've been teaching myself a lot of different things, all of which feel uncomfortably boastful to discuss.

My writing has been amping up bit by bit these last few weeks, although not in a very useful manner. But this is what brought me back, and maybe someday I can share this project. Until then, I bid you all good night and good luck. Wear your seatbelt.

[Fiction] The Dead King's Stories, Chapter 1

His grasp of the Firstblade slowly loosened as his senses returned. Although he'd been conscious for almost twenty minutes, only now could be feel himself breathing. Only now could he feel the shaking of the carriage. Only now could he smell the patchroot and bitterfrond he'd been marinated in. He felt himself breathe a sigh of relief.

For twenty minutes, he'd stared motionless at the dragon clutching the ceiling. A bronze depiction of Mnir, the smallest and craftiest of the gods, pruning with shears of lightning his own tail's spikes. As the legend goes, once he'd gathered a thousand thousands, he plummeted from the sky and threw them like javelins into the ground. Protruding upright from the earth in neat rows, he'd brought the people agriculture. Every seed since planted came from those spikes, and every plant—even the leaves of the witch's tea that still coursed through his veins—was a descendant of those first crops Mnir flung from the heavens.

He heard a voice, but could not turn to look. It was the voice of the High Smithy, the man who'd helped him escape the fires of Kingsfeast. "Your Majesty can hear me now, I'd wager? We're nearly to Quarantine. Just try and relax."

Immobile, he idly considered whether such ill humor could be construed as treason.

[Mission Statement]

We live in the future.
We are giants in our own bodies.
We are less than dust to the universe.
We talk to the stars.
We casually make our way towards immortality.
We tell ourselves someone else knows better.

[The Private Lives of Men in Monocles]

Little break there. Multiple sicknesses in the immediate family - some of this family so immediate that it is actually me. I'll be pre-scheduling multiple poems (ie. chambering them) for the next few Fridays, and hopefully this will minimize the pressure for me to get on here and post, oh, I don't know stuff like...

• more OtherNick chapters;
• femto-fiction;
• haikus;
• Tweets from the sub-moon, #reallyabout, #tenwordstories, and a yet-unknown trucker (#WillBargsom);
• blueprints for rocket-powered treehouses;
• ridiculous science fiction; and
• even more poetry.

Just off the top of my head, anyway. Stay tuned.