It’s November 3rd, and I promise I’m not going to write a blog post every day in November. That’s not how you finish a novel, though it is a good way to prepare for finishing a novel. Maybe I should write a blog post every day, and then in December, finish my next book around Christmas.

In the mean time, I’m showing up again to do some writing, and this feels like a good way to warm up. It’s also a good excuse for me to talk a little bit about the struggles of my current story, hopefully without giving any spoilers.

Before I talk about The Psychic Out of Time, though… I’ve noticed an uptick in traffic here lately, and according to Jetpack, about half of the new traffic is from China.

Are you or someone you know maintaining a blog, and are you also seeing a lot of traffic from China? I’m guessing it’s a bot or something technical, like maybe someone training an AI. But why blogs? My posts are rife with typos and incorrect words (homonyms are my Kryptonite — I really do need an editor), so if they’re training on me, they’re poisoning their well.

It’s fun to fantasize that I somehow have fans in China, but since none of my work has ever been translated out of English, that seems unlikely.

At this point, it doesn’t seem to matter. It piques my curiosity. Maybe there’s a thread there that will lead to a fun story.

Speaking of stories, allow me to talk broadly about The Psychic Out of Time. No spoilers. Just things that will probably show up in the blurb.

Mel Walker is a psychic that can see the past. With that in mind, The Repossessed Ghost and The Psychic on the Jury are stories involving time displacement, but it’s safe and it kind of makes sense. Mel isn’t going back to the past and making changes. While his feet are firmly planted in the present, he looks at the past and sees things that he wasn’t present for. We can understand this because we do this all the time with cameras.

In The Psychic Out of Time, Mel meets Holly, a psychic that sees the future. Mel looks backward, she looks forward, and when they first meet, they converse across the span of time. In fact, the first time Mel meets Holly is not the first time Holly meets Mel.

I like time travel stories, and I have to write this like one, even though none of the characters actually travel through time. I have to consider causality, free will, and where each character is on their journey through the narrative. It needs to make sense, be easy to follow, and avoid some of the things time travel stories get wrong without being obvious about it.

It’s fun, but it’s hard. I keep hitting these points where I have to stop and really think. The characters can’t travel through time, but through their interactions, information is able to move forwards and backwards, which is just as bad or worse.

I’m trying to write the next Mel Walker story. Not the next Tenet, as much as I loved that movie.

That’s where I’m at, anyway. The work day went okay, but I’m a little bit behind on some stuff, and that sucks. I may need to work late tomorrow. If that’s the case, you probably won’t hear from me until Thursday, as I already have plans for Wednesday evening.

Maybe I’ll sneak some writing/blogging time in earlier in the day. Who knows? Maybe Holly knows, but she hasn’t told me yet.