Hello everyone. I’ve been doing my best to update this blog weekly since September, and it’s been an absolute blast. In the past I’ve only ever updated sporadically: when I had a strong idea for something that I couldn’t sell, or where edits changed a piece to the point where I felt there was a whole other article still to be written.
Since writing weekly, it’s been huge (to steal a Trumpism – I don’t like his politics, but we’ve got a disturbing similarity in lexicon…)
I’ve made friends, I’ve increased my social media followers, and I’ve tripled the rate of my study: there’s nothing that stimulates the mind and gets me learning better than the motivating pull of these blog posts raising questions and spurring me on to new areas.
More than that, the conversations these posts have prompted have hugely widened the scope of my knowledge, just in a few months, and given me a three dimensionality to my work that could only come from discussing it with people who knew what they were talking about.
This is why I’m committed to keep posting on my blog, BUT I’ve got a lot of work coming up this year.
In 2016, I committed to be part of an education and theatre project run by a friend, based around both the character and historical personage of Joan d’Arc – exploring Joan and the relationship of visionary women with Shakespeare’s audiences. I still sincerely hope this project will come to fruition, and so I am engaged in preparing material for it.
I am also proud to say that I’ve been selected to speak at a conference later this year. At this exact moment I can’t say much about it, but once official confirmation is made, I’ll disclose more: as I’ve mentioned before, the paper will be about the curse, and it’s place in the day-to-day worldview of the Medieval and Early Modern English.
I am also ecstatic to report that I have been engaged to adapt my Rose lectures into a book (with extra material!) called (something along the lines of) The Supernatural in Early Modern Theatre. It’s going to be a shortish work, for sale electronically and in print, that should be available by the end of the year.
In the world of fiction, I’m in talks with an awesome friend and colleague to publish an urban fantasy novella (probably late in 2018) that will be on the list of a new ebook publisher launching soon.
My home nation of Wales will also be seeing a bit more of me later in the year: I have been asked to speak at a literary festival in September – a new festival in a place very important to me. Like the conference paper, publicity hasn’t been officially put out and other speakers are waiting to confirm, but I’ll be more specific once I get the go ahead.
(I’ve also hopefully agreed to found a podcast with my friend Mark, whose blog is awesome. We’re going to be getting together once a month to talk about topical things, geek stuff and whatever awesome rubbish tickles our fancy).
Finally, the reason there was no post last week is because I’ve been engaged in a very exciting project at Shakespeare’s Globe, my day job, which will hopefully become something that people can visit and partake in by the late spring.
Because of all that, from now on I’ll be posting here on the last Sunday of the month, with the next post scheduled for Feb 26th.
As is the nature of things – not all these enterprises may pan out. If I exit 2017 with all these things in play, I will have had an exhausting and amazing year. If I exit 2017 with HALF these things in play, I will consider it to have been a pretty damn sweet time.
In the meantime, I will have continued to blog here, and as my workload hopefully sheds and I get more time, I’ll be able to go at least fortnightly for a bit.
In the meantime: thank you to everyone who reads this, I hope you enjoy my work. If anyone’s interested in my process and updates on how things are going between history posts, drop a line in the comments and I’ll put up occasional posts here between history blogs talking about what I’m up to.
Finally: every single one of you is awesome, and everything is going to be okay. It might not be okay at the moment, and we might go through a period of becoming okay, then becoming not okay, and becoming okay again, but I promise it will happen.
Good luck and godspeed.
Jon
London, January 29th, 2017.