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Fall has finally made it to the Pacific Northwest. Rained like hell on Saturday. Sunny and cold yesterday. Monsoonerating this morning when I got up. Went and got food. Skipped shooting. Will do Tai Chi and Cane form later. Came home and wrote.

I have been exhausted. Just worn down to a nub. Not sure why. Have had a hard time braining some lately, so I suppose a touch of mental instead of physical. Feeling old somedays, but that’s friends, not me. Know a writer who is just about twenty years older than me. Early seventies. Heard him talking about how he had reached a point where he had slowed down, mentally. Wasn’t as certain that he could write a full novel and have it all work. Have it all in his head and get it down on paper.

That he might have to finally retire from that thing that had been his joy for more than thirty years. Hope not. The man’s awesome, both as a writer as well as a person. We need more of his art in the world.

And it’s part of the reason I write at the speed I do. As I explained to someone a while ago, the only person I’m competing with is death, and he’ll be along for me soon enough. I’ve only got another forty or fifty years, and I’d like to be mentally productive for as long as I can.

David Drake finally admitted defeat and retired recently. Another one that the years had caught up to.

Like Elton John, I plan to have a lot of product in the trunk, ready to be delivered, if not already out somewhere.

Writing: finished the fifth Stephanie Machesky erotica and set up the sixth. Then I wrote a story for my upcoming Cyberpunks anthology (Boundary Shock Quarterly 022. Spring 2023). Less a gun fights and car chases story and more a meditation on the nature of wealth in an uneven future, where a few folks will control most of the world. (Worse than they do now.)

After that, I started the eighth Last Stand novella. Its all done but the epilogue at this moment, and I’ll write that tomorrow.

Not sure what comes after that. I don’t currently have a short story in mind that you folks haven’t read yet, without going back and looking through the stacks. Easier if I just wrote something new. Watch this space, because I’ll have one more blog post next week before November’s story goes out.

English Paul sold his house and is in the process of moving to SoCal. Somewhere in the Temecula/Hemet region, though I don’t think they actually have a new place lined up yet. It does mean that music gets a little weirder, but I did get all the equipment set up and now I need to learn the software. (Reaper is what those folks use to capture vocals and mix things, so I get to figure out how that goes together and record a few things.)

Also teaching myself new things musically. I never learned an instrument that could play chords, so this is all new to me. Slowly getting there, but that’s fine. I have some awesome friends I can ask when it comes time to make real songs, instead of the melody and lyrics I can kinda do now.

What are you folks up to? And what crazy new thing have you done lately?

Shade and sweet water,

b

West of the rainy Mountains, WA

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