Procrastinating

Additional research is popping details that are going to come in mighty handy in the writing of RICIMER, I have to admit.

I also have to admit that I'm indulging in additional research because I'm procrastinating about the writing of RICIMER.

Why?

Because it's hitting just too close to home at the moment.

Last year's set of Alianora Books COME HELL AND HIGH WATER almost didn't go into print because they were hitting too close to home as we were dealing with our own hell and high water at the time.

But they were almost done already so ... out they went.

This is different.

For one thing, I've only just begun the writing of the manuscript itself.

For another, RICIMER is essentially about setting up the initial forging of the strong independent individual nations of Europe out of the ashes of the Western Roman Empire. The forging of steel into the spines of the peoples of Europe, or perhaps the forging of the steel that was already there into what they would need to survive as nations, peoples, cultures that share a common basic belief system despite differences among them.

The end of the Western Roman Empire forced those related peoples, to make of  themselves distinct nations, some already in the building stages, some only just forming.

And they had barely gotten themselves halfway situated before the onslaught began.

How in the name of all that's Holy am I supposed to write about THAT with things the way they are right now over there?

HOW!?!

The past has always been tied to the present and both tied to the future - but this ... this bothers me. Am I writing about the past, today, or the future? The centuries are different, the technology is different, the players are different, but the Story Lines are eerily not so very different.