[As usual, three 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. It rained yesterday. Not a lot, but actual water falling from the sky. And mid-70s instead of mid-90s around here. Yay.
Today, the marine layer is still heavy at 11am, and the forecast calls for partial sun after it burns off, but only about 72F up in the mountains. I’ll take it.
I’m finally done with all the damned steroids. And physically recovering. I have zero stamina right now, having found the edges of it a few times.
Emotionally, I’m kinda a mess as well. HOWEVER, I have a reminder in my phone that tells me every August 1st to beware of rage and depression issues. I have a few theories as to why it hits when it does.
Today, (August 22) is the anniversary of when Donna died in 2008. Sixteen years. We were married for just over three weeks, because for the first 9 years we were together, she told me in no uncertain terms that if I suggested marriage, she’d toss my ass to the curb.
When she turned that around after she got sick (breast cancer, Stage 4, untreatable, Make your peace with God sort of thing), you could have knocked me over with a feather. We got married in late June. She died July 22.
Yeah.
That was a Tuesday. We did not have the wake that Saturday, because that’s a granddaughter’s birthday, so we did it a week later, which would have been Aug 2.
Hitting that reminder every year (as I’ve been processing things this summer) is probably part of it. This summer has been a trial.
I think I hit bottom last Thursday. Told the Fabulous Publisher Babe™ that August had come early, and she understood. Also told her not to let me make any important decisions.
Not because I would do things I regret. More because I would be painting in molotov cocktails when I did.
PROBABLY not the best idea. Probably.
Then a friend of mine who is an amazing baker handed me a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread, still warm from the oven last night. Just had a slice five minutes ago. Gonna ask him at some point to teach me how, because I have never made yeast bread. Quick breads, sure. Nothing that involves rising and punching, so I’ll need adult supervision.
Plus, his looks like a hydra coil of thin ropes, all twisted together. And yes, let me taunt you with how amazing it turned out. But baking is his love language.
Writing: Crossed 35k on Heather #3 this morning. Target 65k, so past halfway and setting up a series of small battles and intrigues that will culminate in something almost apocalyptic in scale.
Still expecting 5 novels in “Warlord of Yaumgan” but I could be wrong either way by one. Depends, because I’m letting this one unfold organically. Jessica was 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2 in organization, plus 2 side stories and the CS-405 trilogy. Kosnett was designed as six novels, sequentially touching each of six cultures and exploring them. Warlord is really the second part of what happened at The Passage at Loong at the end of Kosnett 6, when the Zerzan Unification decides that they cannot live in peace with the Monarchists.
Additionally, I’m doing research for the next two Red Branch novels. If you or anyone you know are experts (or knowledgeable dilettantes) on early Jet Aviation (Second Generation stuff, really, from an advanced and experimental de Havilland Venom through the never-built Lockheed XF-90) and would like to First Reader for technical issues, lemme know. I’ve done a LOT of research, and started accumulating a fun library of stuff (see attached image) for story ideas.
In Indie Publishing, EVERY time you hit publish, you might be struck by lightning, and that book becomes your entire career, so publish something you’d be okay with, if you had to write 10-20 more in that series/universe. I have no idea how folks will react to Red Branch, but I’m having way too much fun reading history and technology of the early Cold War Era. Stuff that kinda gets mentioned in passing, because most history books end in 1945 with the war. From there, they MIGHT mention a war in Korea, before everyone spending volumes on Vietnam or more recent events.
So I’ve had to rabbit-hole my library’s ebook collection in order to find stuff. Yesterday, I walked individually through all 1750 titles in the military section, because they have no filters worth a shit to let me leave off anything ancient, or anything Vietnam, or the US Occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Got about a dozen titles queued up, and currently reading about what happened to everyone at Bletchly Park, after they moved GCHQ back to London in 1947.
Hope your Mondays are getting better. I’m off for a burger in a while, just because.
OH, AND: REMINDER: The pre-order for Warlord of the Spinward Reaches got nuked by Amazon. If you didn’t get your copy, this is your reminder to go find it.
shade and sweet water
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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