It’s already happening. How can that be?

The signs are unmistakable. As inexplicable and colorful and eerie and awe-inspiring as the aurora borealis. My own private one. And the truth is, I’ve been waiting for this to happen– wanting it to happen, really, dreaming of ways to make it happen– for at least twelve of the fourteen years I devoted to writing The Book of Bunk. And now it is happening. And all I want to do is scream.

Or dance for joy.

Or scream.

A couple weeks ago, a longtime reader wrote me privately, concerned at what he perceived as a touch of despair creeping into some of these posts. His note was intended to encourage me, and it absolutely did.

But I don’t consider anything on this blog an act of desperation.  It’s more mouse-waving-tiny-mouse-middle-finger-at-descending-eagle. A (possibly ridiculous, but genuinely joyful) act of defiance. A declaration of determination, maybe even independence. A flair shot from a lifeboat (I’m still here…). An X on a treasure map I’m rolling up and setting adrift, in the hopes that I can launch it past the shore-breakers of indifference and economic annihilation into whatever the internet equivalent of the Gulfstream is, so that someone, somewhere, might fish it out one day, unravel it, and come here. And find the treasure– and it really is treasure, this book, I promise– that I’ve buried.

Today, though, when I sat down to post, what I really wanted to tell you about was the new project I finally kicked off on Tuesday. An all-new, wildly different, linked set of stories, light and sweet and funny and odd, very possibly the Thing that eats the next two or three (or, god help me, ten) years of Glen’s life.

And that was the moment I realized it was happening.

See, the X I’m putting on that treasure map isn’t really for you. It’s for me. Because for me, The Book of Bunk really is– was– Calypso’s island (which, uh, makes me Odysseus? Oh, I can hear the next note from aforementioned letter-writing conscience now…). That is, it was somewhere I foundered, and found a kind of love, and got mesmerized, and couldn’t leave. For fourteen years. I need to be able to find the thing I finally made while I was there. It’s too important to me to lose.

But somehow– so long before I was expecting it, and to my surprise, before I was ready to go– I’m suddenly off the island.

There’s no despair in these posts (okay, okay, but really, only a little), because you have to realize: most of what Bunk is going to give me has already been given. From it, I got a quest. An impossible challenge. A piece of writing I really didn’t think I’d be able to pull off, and then did.

I want you to read it. So badly. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be bothering with these posts. But if you never get to, what do I lose?

Validation? Feh.

The chance to see it surviving in the world, discussed and dismissed and maybe even honored or at least welcomed? That’d be nice.

Money? (Cue sitcom laugh track here.)

Today is the day I realized I no longer live in Bunk County. I am adrift once more, on my way somewhere else, the next stop on my way home, wherever that is, to get bewitched by something else new and wondrous and terrible and strange. Today, I’m free, to go where I will, and I’m not looking back. Bye, Bunk County. We’ll be back for that treasure. I promise. I swear, on my life. And soon. Even though it really is time for the creative part of me to be elsewhere.

But I need you to know that I loved it there.

I loved it there.

I really, really did.

I loved it there.