This is a four-day Winter Break weekend and, as usual, I have tons of work to do, including preparing my taxes, sorting through my 2006 receipts, doing a bunch of estate work, grading 2 tests, writing 2 other tests, and proofreading the AP Calc final exam. At least I do not need to worry about getting bored (or doing my own writing, alas).

Speaking of writing, I think I will do something rare here and indulge my ego a bit by discussing my current writing projects. I apologize if you find this boring:

This summer Fei Fei and I hope to spend a few weeks finishing the Tibet book and send out a query-and-sample to a bunch of publishers. Since I am primarily editing the book while Fei Fei is doing the writing, I can state publicly that this is going to be a fabulous book about the history and culture of a land which is largely misunderstood in the modern world. The book’s main storyline about the year she spent there studying traditional Tibetan medicine is also fascinating in how she dealt with the clash between traditional Tibetan medicine and modern western medicine, as well as the experiences of a young Chinese girl working in a country where most Chinese are looked upon very warily, and rightfully so considering the recent histories of those two countries.

As for my personal writing, when I can squeeze a bit of time away from my now-monthly Visions of Paradise (which is available for reading at http://efanzines.com/ *hint hint*), I have been developing a series of far-future sf mysteries. Don’t get the idea these are either crime fiction or action/adventure thrillers. My idea of the ideal mystery is a historical mystery in which the main character tries to unravel either questionable historical facts or legends in a futuristic setting different enough from the contemporary world to be wondrous and thought-provoking. Examples of this type fiction are Robert Silverberg (whose love of history shines through such novels as Nightwings and A Time of Changes), Jack McDevitt (in books such as Infinity Beach and the Alex Benedict series), and Poul Anderson (particularly in his Polesotechnic League stories whose settings and alien beings are truly wondrous, although the plots are more problem-solving than mysteries).

I’ve already written two recent stories of this type (one of which, entitled “Starflame,” is posted as issue #109 of VoP), and have have preliminary ideas for another story in each series which are the same type of story. Maybe this summer I’ll have time to draft them.

As for nonfiction, I’m still in the very preliminary stages of planning two books. One of them is a commentary/history based around an extensive series of fascinating photographs a photographer friend took of northern New Jersey, while the other is a book about how immigration affects students of high school age, based on my experiences as teacher and advisor at a school with a very large immigration population (mostly Asian). Both these books are still in the “percolating in my brain / doing very general research” stages though, so I have little idea what direction either will take, assuming they get past the general stage and progress into the stage of active planning. If I’m lucky, you’ll hear more about both these books in the future.