Updates from Blinking Blue Line

It's been a while, but I promise I'm still here!

Actual footage of my desk lately. Photo by Jesus Hilario H. on Unsplash

Hello friends! It’s been far too long. I’ve thought of you often and have meant to send you something—anything!—a short story or two!—a teaser of my upcoming project!—but life just gets busy sometimes, and this has been one of those times. Remembrance finished up in April, shortly after spring break, and we had a mad dash to get to the end of the school year. Two days after the last day of school, we all came down with a nasty cold, then a skin infection, then one of the girls got a double ear infection, and then I developed acute bronchitis. All told, someone was sick in our house for fully a month. Ten days later, we moved! And now we’re hurtling toward the choir camp I’m planning at a parish about half an hour from our house. It’s been a crazy time in the Dietz home!

Remembrance has gone some significant structural edits and is currently in the hands of some really wonderful beta readers. After their feedback comes in, I’ll be working through their comments, copy editing and formatting the book, and releasing it as (hopefully!) both a paperback and an e-book some time this fall. Stay tuned!

If you’re new here and would like to read what I’ve come to call “the Substack draft” of Remembrance, the first five chapters are available for free here, and the rest can be accessed for the cost of an e-book.

Coming up in the fall, I’m excited to be releasing a shorter-run serial that will be called either On Ravens’ Wings or Ravenswing, if I can ever make up my mind. It’s shaping up to be a neat little fantasy quest story with (of course!) some themes of repentance, forgiveness, and justice. I’m excited to share it with you all! The story is tangential to the McNeill Institute, so it’s set in the same universe, but you won’t see much by way of repeated characters. Maybe a cameo here or there if I’m feeling sneaky! My hope is to begin releasing the story in early September, but I’ll likely be able to develop a more realistic timeline after Choir Camp is over at the end of July.

In the meantime, here’s a little teaser:

I didn’t want to establish anything like camaraderie between the three of us, but I needed to know where we stood.

“We should take inventory,” I offered. “See what we’ve got between the three of us and what we’re lacking. With virtually no idea what we’re up against, it can’t hurt to know our assets. And if you picked up anything from the prison regarding what goes on in this gods-forsaken place, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to take stock of that as well.”

Lilo muttered to herself, calling to mind anything she’d brought with her. Thaddeus was silent.

I spoke up again. “I have some extra clothes—we can use the cloth as bandages if need be—and a dagger. I also stocked up some food over the last few months and have about half a skin of water.”

Lilo chimed in. “I have a year’s worth of stolen candles and matches, a pouch of healing herbs I picked up from a black market dealer in the prison that might actually be hallucinogenic drugs—I didn’t get a chance to check before they picked me up this morning—and a few other trinkets I thought might be useful to bring with me.”

My jaw dropped. “How did you get all of that? And how did you get it in here with you? You only had one pack when we came in!”

I could hear the smile in her voice as she replied. “Oh, this? This is nothing. Just a few things I picked up over the last year or so. Stealing is second nature to me—my social safety net, you could say. I was convicted for theft. They should have known to give me a good search before I came if they didn’t want me bringing anything in with me.”

“I see.”

“Yeah,” she continued, “Basically when I turned 18 and was kicked out of my mom’s house, I didn’t have anywhere to go and no one would employ me because I was Kaleia’s daughter, so I had to steal to survive. My village was hard on me, so I took to the streets and never looked back. Eventually, I had a stable enough lifestyle to think about building up some wealth, so I started looking for some bigger… investments, you might say. I was generally very skilled at the profession, but I got lazy trying to filch something from the art museum, and I got caught. That’s how I ended up here. But I don’t think they ever found my stash, so once I get out of here, I’ll be fine. I can just pick up where I left off.”

“So it doesn’t sound like you were stealing for survival at that point.” Thaddeus responded dryly.

“I suppose not, but it’s not like I could get a real job, even if I did want one. No one would hire me. Anyway, Thaddeus, what do you have? Did you manage to bring anything?”

“I managed to scribble down some notes from the prison lore: botany, biology, and the like… But if we’re stuck in this darkness they’ll be no use to us.” Thaddeus’ voice was somber, almost despairing, as he continued. “We have no idea if it will be this dark forever. We have no idea if there’s any food growing or a source of clean water. There may be hungry animals waiting around any corner and we have nothing with which to feed them but ourselves. Your little inventory might make you feel better, but it’s not worth much in the long run.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, and neither did Lilo, much to my surprise.

“I don’t know what you two have heard about this place, but in the best case scenario, we’re lucky to come out of this with all of our limbs and our sanity. In the worst case, well…”

A growl echoed around the room, finishing Thaddeus’ point for him. His face was dimly lit by the light of our one candle. If I hadn’t been able to see him, I would have said he’d made the sound himself. A chill ran down my spine as I once again realized how hopelessly underprepared we were.

There’s still a lot of planning and preparation going into this story, and I’m excited to share more as I get closer to publishing. But if this sounds intriguing, I’d love to have you hop on board now so you can receive each new installment right in your inbox.

I know that I’ve mentioned writing up “The Harvey Files” to share with you all as well, telling the story of the origin of the Rehabilitation Research Project that was a central part of Remembrance’s plot. That’s still on my radar, and I have some really fun ideas for how I can make it a super immersive experience. But this other story has been living rent-free in my head for the better part of the last ten years, and once it clicked, I couldn’t pass it up.

What have you been up to lately?