March has arrived with a quieter kind of pressure.

I’ve found myself thinking about beginnings - how they happen, where they come from. I keep returning to the question of how I began Deep House: A Haunting. Not just the first line, but the moment it truly started. And now, standing at the edge of a new novel, I’m asking the same thing again: where does this one begin?

More truthfully - where do I begin?

It’s easy to put it off. Tomorrow feels like a better place to start. Later, perhaps. There are always small, convincing distractions. Practical things. Necessary things. Even the quiet satisfaction of a reorganised sock drawer.

But beginnings resist force. They don’t arrive neatly. They circle.

More writing

What’s becoming clearer is that, despite appearances, the work has already begun.

I’ve built a full family tree. I can see the characters now - not just their names, but their connections, their tensions, the shape of their lives before the story ever touches them. I understand where they begin.

And while I’ve been circling the question of the opening, something else has been happening quietly in the background. The story has been growing. Expanding. Forming itself just out of sight.

So perhaps this hasn’t been procrastination at all.

Perhaps this is simply part of how I work.

On commitment

So here is the commitment, set down plainly:

A chapter a week, next month.

It feels both small and significant. Not rushed, not overwhelming - but steady. Something I can return to, week after week, without losing the shape of the work.

Slow, perhaps.

But achievable.

And more importantly - begun.

From the fog

There are moments when the past presses forward - and something answers.

I am here again.

It happens without warning, and already I feel the pull to leave. I need to move forward, to do something - but I don’t know how long I have. That is the cruelty of it.

They sense me. Their panic rises before they understand it. Yes… I lean into that. I press closer. I scream into her ear - though I have no voice.

She hears something. I know she does.

The hairs on her neck lift - not from cold, but from me.

And still I wonder: is this what I want?

To be felt only as fear?

Closing

For now, March feels like a month for beginning - not all at once, but in small, deliberate ways.

Thank you for reading.