After much pondering, I have realised that I need to give back to you, my ever faithful reader…ahem, I mean readers.

Lovely as this soap box has been, it has been almost exclusively that: a pulpit for me to indoctrinate with views ranging from philosophical to technical.

What will I be giving back? What currency will I be expending on your behalf? I’m glad you asked, or would have.

While I am very satisfied with my current career direction, I have spent roughly a year trying my hand at novel-writing as well. It has been lovely, but it has also been quite a learning experience. Several of you even had those frightful first drafts inflicted on your minds, for which I apologise. If it is any comfort, remember that I was the first reader and victim, so I share your pain.

So, this blog will become a playground for my short form work. I get the joy of writing, and you lot can tell me how brilliant or awful you think each one is. What character you loved, and which you despised. How I shocked you with my plot twists, or how you lost interest on paragraph three. All well-intended feedback is welcome.

A disclaimer is attached to this, though, and I ask that it be kept in mind.

Even if I share your views on life and morality, the characters in these worlds might not. You don’t swear? Some people do, including characters in my stories. Personally, I don’t exhibit any deranged characteristics (no arguments there, please), but I may write a deranged character. So if your moral sensibilities are easily irritated, feel free to give this a miss.

Also, many of you to whom I rant or speak regularly will no doubt spot a running joke or old topic. I will credit you where I remember, but feel free to chime in if I’ve forgotten exactly who said what to whom.

So I step down from my soap box, brush my fingers along the chipped paint where my feet have stood, smile at the stickers on the sides from all the places it’s been, and sit on the street corner curb that, despite spanning continents, has become my own place of solace and refuge.  Sitting there, turning the splintered crate over in my hands, I smile a sad smile, and I wonder whose shoes will chip away the rest of the paint. And I hope, sincerely and truly, that the characters that use this place of solace from here on out will find it much, much less…

…empty. (No offense, Mother. You’ve been great.)