If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I really haven’t known what to do with myself for about a month now. I know that I want to put my heart and soul into writing fiction, and I have big, intricate plans that go even beyond the plotline you’ve been reading for the last year. One of my greatest loves is the Star Wars franchise (both before and after 2014), because the vision of one man paved the way for an infinite galaxy of cohesive stories which build off one another and inform preexisting media after the fact. One of my favorite examples of this (pulled from the Legends continuity, but since it’s during The Phantom Menace, I still kinda count it) is the fact that there’s a pivotal moment in Palpatine’s story which happens offscreen during that movie.
We don’t have a name for Darth Sidious’ Sith Master until the final film of Lucas’s Star Wars career—we all remember “The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise”—but it isn’t for another seven years that we got proper confirmation that Plagueis was for sure Sidious’ master. Not only that, but the Darth Plagueis novel adds that point I mentioned earlier. Without wishing to spoil, the events of The Phantom Menace begin before the novel ends, and in fact before the eponymous character meets his…tragic fate.
After I finished Darth Plagueis for the first time, I couldn’t rewatch Episode I fast enough, looking specifically for the point when the book began and Plagueis dies and so on. It’s that excitement that I want to produce in others, not to mention my desire to open the door into a new world. One which, ideally, will outlive me.
I haven’t talked about that desire here before. Perhaps it’s a gigantic oversight that I’ve failed to be transparent over the last year. I suppose I was hoping that my fiction would speak for itself; now I see that it’s the process for which I seek support. That’s what this blog is now: the place where I…am. Umbrella Terms is where I’m just going to write about whatever has been going on in my life this week. In college, my first blog was named after my favorite beer: Harpoon’s UFO White. UFO stands for “UnFiltered Offering,” as most of Harpoon’s beers are filtered; the idea behind that blog was for me to have a place to write free from the pressure borne from the knowledge that I’m charging people for this writing. Thus, this is the announcement that I’m divorcing this blog from my Patreon, in many ways. In many ways, it already was; for the last couple of months it’s been specifically focused on To Save What’s Lost anyway. So now, I’ve finally figured out what’s on the next page.
There is a blog, last updated May 23rd, 2017, which was designed to house this project. I left it behind when I began down the path of Travel Writing, but the time has come to resurrect it. I can’t say for sure what will be going on on this site in the future, and that’s entirely the point. I’m sure you’ll be getting scenes from TSWL which aren’t fully complete, and I will for sure be back next week with an update on what’s going on. I really look forward to the opportunity to just talk about whatever I’ve been thinking about. In an ideal little world, I’ll hit a point where I actually post these musings more than only once a week. I want to hit that point. We’ll see how long it takes, but to quote one of my favorite poets (he’s a rapper), “I’m gonna get there if it takes a day or fifty years,” and “Even with the Himalayas in my way it’s gonna happen…”
Here’s to turning over a new leaf, turning the page, starting fresh, renaissance…
Umbrella Terms 