In hindsight when I look back at it, 1997 was quite a good year. I look back at a lot of the things that happened over that year. For what it's worth there was a lot that happened over the year that would change the way I saw things forever.

     1997 was the year that Princess Diana was chased down and killed in a car accident which was caused by English tabloid paparazzi. In 1997, Sarah McLachlan released Surfacing, one of her most important albums ever . 1997 would be the year I would see two very important films, Beautiful Thing and The Hanging Garden (the latter film being Canadian). 1997 was also when Oasis released their seminal post Wondewrall effort Be Here Now.   

     1997 would also be the year three very important things would happen. The first one was I would finally carve an identity in the electronic dance scene in Saskatoon. I had stumbled into Diva's for the very first time on a PPM night and was introduced to electronic/dance music proper. This would be enough motivation for me to reignite the first to begin DJing, a silent love that had carried with me from high school. It would only be a matter of time before I started pegging the tracks and remixes that made my ass shake on the dancefloor.

     The second major event: I would start coming out, finally realizing after a years self-research. Depending on who you talked to and where I was, I was just either inching out of the closet, or in the case of a lot of my Edmonton friends I was pretty much full blown out. My newly discovered affection for the music gave me an excuse to explore a new city, make some new friends, and fall in love with another guy for the first time.

     Somewhere in between, a third major event happened. I'd started working on two novels. The first one was called Couples, the second being Karma:Voyeur.   Couples admittedly only to made it to page five, and Karma, the designated sequel actually ended up being written in a first draft that was finished a lot quicker then I had actually expected. Sadly, Couples would remain on the hard drive at page five, all while I told the sequel's story in first person. Eventually I printed off a copy of Karma and bound it together.

     It would take me a few more false starts to keep working on Couples. The story's title then transformed into The Screen Behind The Mirror, which then finally evolved into Drowned World. The first in a series of queer love in the age of sex, drugs, and techno was finally done in first draft as of 2004. It would take a few more years, but finally Drowned World was released in 2009. That being said, I would frequently delve back into the first draft of Karma when I wasn't working on Drowned World. As time passed not only was I busy working on books three and four, but I was beginning to see how sorely lacking book two was. The skeleton was there, however it was looking dangerously thin and underfed. Truth be told, my mentality then and now, in addition to my writing had evolved over time. So finally over the past few years I've been exhuming that first draft a little more, attempting to start to fill in the gaps caused by Drowned World's story line. Admittedly I couldn't help but chuckle at some of the story in its first draft. Seeing what I wrote then, compared with what I've written now it wouldn't be fair to leave it as is.

     Truth was I was scared to get my hands dirty and back into the manuscript. I had used the excuse of waiting to visit Toronto for geographic research as the reason why I was holding off until working on the manuscript. I had also distracted myself with The Heart's Filthy Lesson, a bit of an emotional exorcism that needed definite attention. And while I've been bouncing between two other first-draft manuscripts as of late, it was finally time to open that first draft this past week. The more I read, the more I began to fall in love with the story line all over again. There are some definite updates that need attention in the story, and when I start making the additions, it's going to resemble the story it was always meant to be. Just to give a little of it away, it's a story about Scott Riley's superstar DJ cousin…told in the first person. And with how things have been funneling out onto paper, I have the strange feeling my Starbucks card is going to be getting a massive workout…