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A good Monday. The Fabulous Publisher Babe™ got home Friday. Utterly exhausted on all axes of motion, but recovering. Met some writers for lunch Saturday so she could see everyone. Stayed home but for random trips into town (grocery, hardware, etc.). Breakfast this morning at OPH instead of Krain because we both woke up early. Home to write.
Cloning Blues/Felix is approaching 40k. Feels close to 50, so I’ll finish it this week. Already reread Scour, Book One because writer brain wanted to work on it next and I left that story open for a series. Will start it by next week, I figure. Book one came in at 60k, so I’ll finish it in June sometime.
Got to looking at my spreadsheet this morning. Felix is novel #105. That doesn’t count anything less than 40k projects, so the first half of Science Officer or all of Last Stand are left off that count, as are other things. It matters because I originally targeted catching my friend Steve Perry for novels. He was writing in another era, where you couldn’t go zoom. And wrote for Hollywood for a chunk. Busy career, and generally “retired” these days, though still working on a few projects with folks like Dan Moran.
Reason that matters is that he had 65 novels to his credit at the time. Kinda blown by that, but knew that, so I’d looked at my next writing goal.
Joseph Haydn is credited generally with 106 symphonies. (The numbers get squishy, depending on who you ask and how things get classified, but 106 is the main number most folks agree on.)
Next project I start (Scour, Book Two) will be #106. Kinda nifty.
With that in mind, I have talked in the past about throwing a party to celebrate when I hit that mark. Because I slowed down I 2023+, it didn’t happen in January, as we once expected. Shit happens, and many of you know what my last 10 months or so have been like.
My birthday is coming up in June. Sounds like a good reason to combine the two, and have 106 on a birthday cake, just to mess with whoever makes it. Because why the hell not?
And with any luck, June 1 marks the beginning of an arc where things settle down some from the abject craziness of the last year, because I’m freaking exhausted and working hard not to bite anyone some days.
Gonna make some changes, but I do that every June 1, going back at least to 1985 as I pause to consider it. Maybe longer. That’s when I do it, on average, and the averages work in my favor this year.
Expect some changes. Mostly for the good, but I gotta sort some shit out.
Hopefully, y’all are along for the ride.
shade and sweet water
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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