Echoes and Imaginings – Mick Canning

I’m still here, although you might be forgiven for not realising that.

One or two of you might have noticed, though, that I have been an occasional visitor to your blogs over the last few months, but mostly I’ve kept away from WordPress in that time.

Of course.

Life quite often has a tendency to get in the way of my writing. It gets in the way of most of the things I do, actually.

That’s my excuse.

But I’m still plugging away at A Good Place, my novel set in Northern India about the English left behind after Independence, and am now very close to finishing it. I’m also working sporadically on Echoes and Imaginings Issue 2, now I’ve decided what I want it to be about. It’s gonna take a while to finish, though.

Cos life, you know.

Life getting in the way. What a drag.

But as for posts on here, I just seem to have just run out of ideas for now. It has been rather tempting to post the odd political rant during the last few months, but I don’t do politics on here. It would just make me cross and I’d get into arguments and I don’t want to do that. The point is I haven’t felt I’ve had anything worth writing. And I’m a great believer in that if you haven’t got anything to say, then don’t say it.

So for now, I ain’t saying it.

I’ve completed my first new year’s project.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to present Echoes and Imaginings, issue one.

Quite pleased with the title, actually. My aim is to produce at least four issues, although whether I do or not depends largely on how quickly I can put each issue together. I want them to roughly reflect the seasons of the year, without being too dogmatic about it. There is a slant towards folklore, psychogeography and a bit of speculation, as well as photography and poetry. Future issues may well have some of my artwork included.

I’m already writing articles for issue 2…

In this issue you can find Hoodening, Wassailing, a meditation on time, photographs, poetry, and more. There are lots of trees. Some of the articles have appeared here as posts, although there is some re-writing, but most of the poetry and the pictures are new. It is available through my Etsy shop, or just message me directly (I use PayPal).

Personally, I reckon it’s a thing of beauty.

And as well as these four issues, I have ideas for some others, which I expect to bring out at random times.

At the moment, I feel this is the way for me to go. I don’t see myself finishing a novel any time soon, although I do have an almost finished one sitting there. I don’t currently feel inclined to get it published, though. And equally, I don’t feel inclined to go through all the hassle of submitting poems or short stories to different publications or into competitions.

And on another note, you have probably seen on other blogs the ongoing issues of pirated e-books (especially on Amazon, I hear). I think we have AI to thank for a lot of this, and it seems so many authors are having their books ripped or plagiarised it’s becoming ridiculous. For that reason, I have simply decided my books will no longer be available as e-books, and have deleted them.