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[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.]

Ye Gads, what a weekend.

Drove down to Portland to see Fabulous Publisher Babe™ and give her some help with our niece (one month out from brain surgery and doing much better). It was also the niece’s birthday yesterday, so cake and quiet party.

Got up this morning and drove back to Seattle. And did all the things around here that needed doing as soon as I walked in the door. Watering plants in her house. Hydroponics. Refill the bird feeders. Get ready for a busy day tomorrow. And Wednesday. Fuck only knows what Thursday has planned, but that’s out far enough I can breathe.

LOTS of rain on the way home. Several errands between Tacoma and the house. Took five hours to finally get here.

Kinda tired. Had some coffee after I got milk at the grocery. Sun just came out here. Apple tree looks amazing (pic). Figs and grapes starting to bud. Pears and cherries bloomed two weeks ago. Looks like a lot of apples this fall. If you like fresh fruit, mark your calendar and remind me in August so you can come out and pic some. Fuji on the left. Honeycrisp on the right.

Corsac Fox percolating along nicely. Just shy of 66k words on an 80k target, so right on track. Except that 6 cliffhangars into 7 as one LONG story, so I need to write 7 over the summer.

Got two projects on my immediate next list, but not sure which I’ll pursue. Both SF. One heavy into romance tropes, but not Romance™. The other is the actual project that I think I shared with some of you several years ago, called Cloning Blues. It bubbled up to the top of my mind and wants to be written. I have another week to worry, so we’ll see. Probably about this time next week, matter of fact.

Gotta see what writer brain wants when we get there. And what is the inverse flip of what I’ve been doing to keep things sharp. Light/Dark. Fast/Slow. Opera/Adventure. SF/Thriller. Something. The key is always going back and forth so I don’t fall into a rut.

This one feels like Old/New, because both of the projects are entirely fresh, rather than Book N in some series, which is what I have been doing lately.

Summer’s coming. Fabulous Publisher Babe™ should be home in a couple more weeks, then plans to bar the door and hibernate for a few weeks, possibly leaving her phone with me to answer so she goes days without talking.

I’m freaking exhausted, but counting down to hopeful normalcy. I am still likely to be a little to bitey for another month, but shit happens. Y’all been warned.

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