[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.]
Monday, running late. Bathroom remodel started yesterday. Stripped out all the baseboard and trim. Chiseled two rows of tiles form around the tub. DISMANTLED the whole damned room, which meant washer, dryer, sink/vanity, mirrors, medicine cabinet, etc.
Monday was spent taping everything and them laying down paint. A dark mint green in the back room (shower on the left and tub on the right), and a dark lavender in the front room (toilet, washer/dryer, vanity).
Yesterday, everything hurt. Today, in better shape and only hands hurt. Splinters, cuts, bruises, etc. Must be summer, I’m bleeding. But it looks nice.
Tomorrow is prep day. Tear up the linoleum and check the underflooring. Touch up the paint where it needs it. Get all the tiles and stuff staged and ready to go like hell on Wednesday. Then grout thursday. Then start the process of reassembling the rooms. Less hurry, because I kinda took the week off. This is, in fact, probably about all the writing I’ll do. Maybe some tomorrow, depending.
Last week, I paused in the project (Warlock At Large) that had paused the previous project (Marrakesh #4) to write a new universe for an upcoming Boundary Shock Quarterly. That will be “Gulliver’s Other Travels,” with “Science Fiction Holidays coming out in October (and Tramp Freighter Captains coming up in July).
I read the children’s abridged Gulliver probably 40-45 years ago, and really only knew it at a surface level as a cultural touchstone. That meant I had to go deep into some research to really wrap my head around what Lemuel Gulliver really did and what he saw. Educational, so this project was already a success before I committed the first words.
Then I wrote words. Fun ones. Beckett Fernsby, Apothecary. As with everything, I approached it like a 7-novel series in my worldbuilding. Lots of depth, which will show up on the page. And then I looked at the themes for the rest of Year Seven of BSQ and brain is suddenly figuring out how to write three more Beckett stories.
Just ’cause. Voicy character. Exceedingly English middle-class, late Victorian era by tone and vocabulary. And a very Gulliver adventure for this first one, while setting him up to have several more with his new friends/crew.
Past that, after this week off, I’ll probably hop back to the Epic Space Fantasy (Swords and Sorcery and Starships) for a while. Maybe. Shit, I don’t know.
Y’all have a lovely week and look for finished bathroom pics in the next two weeks.
shade and sweet water
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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