[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.]
Slightly better Monday, but still kinda yuck. Ended up dropping $2,000 on the car last week fixing various ills. Thank you to everyone who bought books. Keeps me off the streets.
Headed down to Portland tomorrow for a few days. Niece is having major surgery, and I’m one of her favorite people, so I’ll be at the hospital with her while she’s in ICU and then recovering. Will have access to the interwebs, but my brain’s in kinda a bad place right now.
Mostly, got a list of things to do, and been knocking them off because forward brain progress isn’t really easy today. But I got a checklist. Working it.
Remember how I told you that I was going to end up dropping from 1,000,000 to 750,000 words this year, because things were likely to intrude? This was one of them. The big one, because I got no clue how it will all work out and how long her recovery will take. Me and the Fabulous Publisher Babe™ will be swapping off trips down to see her and help as she gets better. I’m still kinda less than optimal.
Good news, I’m really close to finishing Science Officer 14. Exile. Start of the War Of The Pirate Clans, Volume Two, as it were. Messy space battles and snipe hunts in a forest. Depending on how everything else goes, I might finish it this week. Dunno. Beyond my control.
From there, I’ll be sending out your Patreon Stories tomorrow night. And working on some short fiction. Not sure how many stories I’ll end up with for the next Boundary Shock Quarterly, so I might write a second one myself. Always a risk with variable themes and the cast of weirdoes I currently have. Today is Due Date, and I have five stories in hand, and threats of at least three more coming in no sooner than tomorrow. (Professionals ask their editor when they need an extension, and can usually get it because they asked and will deliver fast enough for my needs. It’s the ghosts that piss me off and don’t get to come in late.)
By the weekend, I’ll know. And we’ll go from there. Again, kinda grumpy today. Not your fault. Not my fault. It is what it is.
Hoping to start Corsac Fox #6 next, possibly after some short fiction to fill in future gaps and let the brain ramble around. TBD. Watch this space.
Not a lot of news past that. Been working on the Tai Chi and Kung Fu. My Sifu literally just sent out a proposed path to Black Belt, and three years of study has me currently less than a quarter of the way there. And that’s ShoDan. 1st. Given his logic, I might expect that I could possibly reach that level somewhere around ten years of dedicated study and a background where I was a blackbelt in an unrelated art.
Of course, part of his list includes a number of fingertip pushups to demonstrate, which my shoulder can’t do, so it is entirely possible that I’ll end up having to go study somewhere else if I wanted to actually get a black belt, while learning what he knows. He knows a TREMENDOUS amount, but can’t sort it into a single school, so if I were to somehow be awarded a black belt, I would show mastery in at least five other schools. Like, five times over Shodan.
I’m not sure I have that level of patience. And today is not the day to pursue it, because I’m a little bitey right now.
More news when I know. No update next Monday. I’ll be driving home if all goes well, so maybe Tuesday. Maybe not.
Dunno.
shade and sweet water,
blaze
West of the Mountains, WA
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