A Teaser, A Peek, A Hint at Things To Come

So, life's been hectic; you may recognize this syndrome as "life happens". My 9-year old external hard drive started failing putting all of my work and research at risk. I had to stop and frantically save/copy/backup all of my documents to various storage mediums to make sure I didn't lose anything. This is important (at least to me) so that on a given paper or article I can trace the history and lineage of both the end product and the idea. Keeping all of my originals lets me go back and find out why and where an idea I was working on may have morphed. Also, for the sake of protection, I can show how I created and evolved a theme or idea.

So, with everything saved and stored, I replaced the external drive and that too became something of a chore (nothing is ever straight forward). I ended up using what I think will be a temporary (a Western Digital) 5TB HDD until such time as I can make the final move to the 12TB permanent home I have sitting on a shelf now in my office.

And now my attention is back to my main work. In addition to a few ideas for individual papers and articles on such things as the role of the lodge in masonry, the benefits of belonging to multiple lodges, and some others, I have been and am working on what I have been calling a "short story". That now becomes my primary effort until I am ready to share or publish it.

I have been working on this short story for several months and I had finally picked up a real head of steam when the external drive intervened to jam the brakes on. Luckily, as chaos of the changeover to a new HDD ensued, I was able to flesh out the final form of the outline and the general content of the piece. I picked up work on it again this week and I've made good progress bringing the main content to its near-final form.

The other benefit of the time away from the keyboard last week has been the time I suddenly had to think about the project. I was able to work out several details, the most important being that I don't really think what I'm writing is a classical short story. I think it is something else; I know what I think it is, but for now I'm holding that close. I've also worked out my publication scheme. Rather than just hang it on the website and blast out links, I think I've come up with an improved way to publish this particular work.

I am closing in now on a target date of April 15 to publish this quasi, former short story. I can tell you now that it is a work of fiction that is about a mason and his particular journey. This work will tie the ideas and themes of "A Mason's Journey" together into a story and the first piece of that work will be published in about four weeks.

I had a trusted brother perform a preliminary "peer review" on the work while I was sidelined and "offlined" and his initial feedback has been positive. I cannot go into any details now, but I can say this - I am looking forward to introducing everyone to Noah, my protagonist and sharing his journey and experiences with everyone! Fiction is not everyone's cup of tea so I know not everyone will care for it, but for those who do, I hope you will give it a read when I release it!

I thank you for this brief moment of your time my brethren!