[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.]
Rain passed yesterday. Sun’s out but still a bit chilly this morning. Fabulous Publisher Babe™ has an Eye of Round on the grill at the moment, making roast beef from real beef. (As opposed to all those deli meats you buy at the grocery that are made of scraps and meat glue.)
And she baked a new kind of bread over the weekend. Italian wheat, water, salt, yeast. Most American breads include A LOT of sugar or other sweeteners. Subway Sandwiches in the UK lost a lawsuit several years ago and technically had to rate their bread as cake because of it, just as Pringles has so much other crap in it that they won the case against being classified as potato chips (crisps).
What kind of ULTRAPROCESSED yuck are you eating on a daily basis? Hmmm?
Okay, back to work.
Had a lovely night at the dojo last night. Holiday, so only a handful of us. Both senseis, me, bunch of white belts, so I took the kids and focused on one portion of the Sanchin kata, where you have to walk backwards, while moving both hands in opposite directions as double-blocks.
Right up there with chewing bubble gum and walking in a straight line when I first learned it. Takes time. And practice. So we practiced while the Senseis pulled each student over and worked one-on-one.
Really nice feeling when Sensei took me aside and told me that I’d done a good job with the kids. I’m about eight months deeper into the curriculum than they are. And while they have a couple of years of Isshynryu behind them there are only a few adult white belts and a mass of yellow and orange belts, all under thirteen.
But they’ll get there. And catch up with me at some point, maybe. It will be glorious, if I ever have a chance to visit the dojo of the youngest girl in class after she grows up.
Writing: Finished Red Branch 6 (Iron Curtain) last week. And that first erotica piece I talked about last week, mixing some epic space fantasy opera and a few other things for some future project. Maybe a new magazine, depending on what Mark has to say, but he’s a little busy right now with life and I’m not in a hurry.
Started Marrakesh 6 instead. It will be a duology (two-parter) that I’m aiming to publish in Nov/Dec 2026, after Heather and Ollie are both done. Extends the universe, and circles back, because that’s an ongoing series as opposed to one of those where everything comes to a conclusion and then is done. (Jessica, for instance. Uly doesn’t count, because 7 just rests and I already know what 8 is. Plus, I planned 30+ from the beginning.)
Past that, not a lot. Busy summer coming up.
Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is coming out in June. I will have a paper edition (it is sitting on my left on my desk). If I Tuckerized you into that book (just about everyone I got permission from at this point, saving a couple), and you will be in the Seattle area (WorldCon or any other reason), I would like to get you to sign my copy. And I’ll sign yours.
Mark your calendars. I’ll also be in Vegas for AuthorNation in November, and am talking to the folks at Superstars for February. Hoping to make it to Minneapolis in December for family holiday, but that’s not nailed down yet.
Also happy to road trip to Portland to see you, but not any greater distance than that or Spokane or the Canadian border going north. You let me know.
More erotica in the background. If you wanna first read it, lemme know. If you write erotica or know folks who do, I suspect we’ll give serious talk to starting a Syndicate Magazine at some point, so we’ll be talking and recruiting. Film at 11, as it were.
Past that, y’all have a lovely Tuesday.
shade and sweet water,
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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