It didn’t.  Get over yourself.

But…

I agree I’ve been posting a lot more photos over the last several months than I had been in prior years.  Or something like that.

Let me tell you why.

One: Most of my writing efforts and focus are being directed at two things.  In order, they are Dreamdarkers and End of the Warm Season.  Others also get minutes here and there when my imagination gets sidetracked, but mostly I want to keep my eyes on Dreamdarkers first, and End of the Warm Season second.  I’ve grown to accept the difference between “if” and “when” I get published, and I now choose to ignore the former and assume the latter.  I feel both manuscripts will be of good quality, both stories certainly will give entertainment and pause for thought to anyone who reads them, and getting them on store shelves will not be a problem.  Although, I admit, it could take some time.  But don’t all good things?  So rather than work heartily at writing blog posts, my powers of literary prowess are being centralized on forthcoming books.  But don’t take that to mean there won’t be any writing here.  Ha!  This is my outlet, poppets.  Of course I’ll continue writing here.  It’s just that one must decide which is more important, and at present that decision has fallen on the side of books.  Not all of it; just a lot more of it.

Two: My world doesn’t just exist in words.  Sure, I find words powerful, wonderful, god-like things capable of transporting people to worlds fantastic and events unbelievable, and of drawing pictures in the mind no photograph could equal.  I’m always amazed at how a string of innocuous letters put together just so can illicit precisely the feelings and impressions and imagery I want readers to experience.  To mold the ways of the world with pen and paper is indeed a powerful feat.  But there’s more to the world than manipulating reality via injecting language into the minds of others.  Much more, in fact.  I see and hear a great many things worthy of direct sharing.  I don’t doubt my own linguistic legerdemain and ability to communicate to you precisely what I wish, but nature’s splendor and the daily wonder that is The Kids often provide an almost spiritual interpretation of the cosmos that can be better shared directly rather than via my own feeble translation.  You know how I hate to be cliché and to use such feeble instruments, but a picture truly is worth a thousand words.  Sharing that with you is important to me.

Three: I love taking photographs.  With thousands of them under my belt, sharing a tiny fraction of them here lets me offer to you a bit of the world in which I dwell.  It also gives you the chance to see visually a tad of my life.  Whether it be beauty in simple things, wonder in feline mayhem, a picture to augment an explanation, or some other depiction best left to sight rather than intellect, this journal is as much a picture as it is a word.  I can’t always explain what needs to be explained, but I can sure as hell upload a photo or video.

Four: When was the last time you walked in nature simply for the joy of experiencing that nature?  When was the last time you stopped to realize how much of the world is being lost forever at the hands of humanity?  In those questions lies a truth I have long believed, and in that truth rests an impetus to share my nature photography.  There is wonder and beauty, an incontrovertible grandeur found in the natural world.  Humans constitute such a small fraction of the life that abounds on our planet, and life constitutes only a fraction of the beauty our planet has to offer.  Through our intellect and lack of concern, we subjugate and destroy this world with nary a thought.  As part of this world and not separate from it, I seek to find and share some of the splendid magic I discover and rediscover each and every day.  Perhaps, in a small way, I hope constantly displaying the exquisite magnificence found in everything from a blade of grass to a bobcat will somehow instill in others a newfound respect, admiration, and love for the abundance of living organisms with whom we share Earth, not to mention the overwhelming perfection offered by a creek, a canyon, or a crest.  In knowing the joys of a simple squirrel barking from a tree, or a duck paddling about the shore of the lake, or even just a cloudy afternoon replete with splashes of sunshine… perhaps in knowing such things and seeing them here, someone can find a new appreciation for that which soon will be lost if we do not cease our destructive mentality of sovereign ownership and begin thinking of this world as a place to be saved, to be protected, and of the life found throughout its many regions as fellow travelers who need us to take action lest they be lost for all time.

So the photos and videos will continue as I see fit.  So too, poppets, will the prose, yet I beg your understanding in that my writing efforts must remain primarily targeted on my first and second novels.