[As usual, two weeks lag here, if you aren’t reading this on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/blazeward). If you’d like your news fresher, and the monthly Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef newsletter, all I ask is a buck to help keep the lights on around here.]

Didn’t go shoot this morning, though the weather was finally lovely enough. Hurt too much. Lots of things, including not sleeping all that well for several days. You ever wake up crunchy? That was my morning.

Also went up north Sunday and showed Sensei Johnson the first section of the spear form I’m creating. And got his approval. Then he helped me create a second section, as well as gave me some ideas for what will become a third section. Or a second form. Dunno. Physical Fitness, with heavy spear tipped with sharp steel thingee.

I wanna stay in shape until I’m in my nineties. Walking. Martial arts. Weapon forms. It keeps the brain as sharp as the body. Same reason I get up in the morning and ingest a series of vitamins and things. 8 different flavors, if you will, all intended to keep me from getting any worse than I am today, while maybe making things better.

Been working on slowly losing weight. Worst I ever got was around 225#. Not fasting or making radical changes, because those tend to fall apart. Instead, eating “better” and less.

Weighed in at 202 this morning. Goal is 195 for now, but that’s always a challenge, because summer is when I dig out the machete and ditching blade and work. Muscle weighs more than fat, so I might lose belly meat and gain shoulders. That’s typical in the summer.

But healthy, and that’s really everything.

Writing: finished Flight into Sunrise, which is the fourth Air Pirates of Cyrenaica and completes an arc. Like how and where it ended, as it leaves things open for more, if folks react well later.

Then I wrote two more Chace Haig stories for submission to Thrill Ride Magazine in the fall. That’s the three I need, plus an origin. And I still plan to write several more over the rest of this year, so that I have a pretty deep catalog of such fiction. Planning to go to Bouchercon in San Diego at the end of the summer, and need to have stuff up by then, in case fans want to read stuff.

Then I started the next Last Stand. Episode 12, planned for December, so I complete at least Year One. I still have notes on another dozen or more episodes, but I won’t be putting them out on a monthly schedule.

Instead (at present), we’re going to move the 2023 calendar around (everything is always written in pencil) to publish the three Marrakesh novels starting in January. Maybe a fourth, because I have some ideas there, and a full episode list to explore as well.

Sometime over the summer of 2024, the four Air Pirates books, probably wrapped around the third Corsac Fox novel. Lords of the Endless Plains should be part of a January kickstarter, like Flight of the Corsac Fox was this year (releasing in June if you missed the KS). Book Two, Mistaken Identity, will kickstarter in July-ish, and is on the calendar for general release in November.

In easy terms, I have up through August 2024 ready, in terms of novels and novellas in the can right now, and more coming. And that doesn’t count another batch of novels representing series I need to finish before publishing.

July will see the release of the next book in Kincaide’s War. Vehicles of Epiphany. I’ll start the final book in the trilogy in the fall, I think, with an aim of a 2024 release to complete that arc.

Always, more ideas than time to write them. That’s fine. Forces me to focus tighter. And leaves me time for all the other extracurricular stuff I’m doing this year. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Hope your monday is less crunchy than mine. Finishing this and diving back into Last Stand. Work never ends, but I also took the weekend off to do other things.

Now I need to recover. And chase chipmunks off the bird feeder.

Shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

—————————-

Thank you so much for being my patron and for funding these essays!

If you’re reading the free version (which is published two weeks after the Patreon version), please consider joining the ones who do pay at https://www.patreon.com/blazeward. It’s only a buck and helps keeps the lights on around here.