When this whole quarantine/lockdown started, I set out to write a mini-series of short stories, 4 stories in 8 days. It was fun, sort of a show of strength. I wrote and published the first three in less than a week, and then all of a sudden the body count started rising, and we were all locked up at home, and I decided the last of the series could wait.

Meanwhile, over my social networks, everybody tarted publishing post-apocalyptic stories about viruses, pandemics and assorted infections. And I sort of got tired of the game.

It’s a method to exorcise the fear and the anxiety, sure – but as people keep dying and jobs vanish leaving people with bills and mortgages to pay, anxiety and fear can only grow, and they are good, as long as they are not paralyzing. Because fear and anxiety tell us that things are going downhill, and we should do something.

So, I decided that for a while I’ll leave pandemics and post-apocalyptic fiction to those out there that still manage to do it. I will complete the series, because I owe it to my Italian readers, but not straight away.
I can’t do it anymore. Not right now.
I think my waning energies would be better spent trying to provide some different form of distraction – because we are knee-deep in the kind of horror story that does not need to be reiterated in fiction.
Hell, I might go and write a western.
I’ve had enough of this situation in real life, just imagine how much I loathe it in fiction.