[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.]
Hot. Summer finally arrived this week, as it does in Seattle.
Over the last two weeks, we have also harvested some twenty pounds of cherries off the three trees. I have never gotten a whole pound from the three, and they’ve been in for a decade. All the elements aligned this spring for a LOT of happy tree sex. Got cherry juice, cherry shrub, cherry leather, and a bunch frozen for making booze.
Also got a batch of corn mash turning into moonshine and then whiskey because I have a (TINY!) wood cask to hold it, thus satisfying some of the technical grumps on the topic.
Conversation tomorrow with Mark on the erotica magazine. From day one, I have now completed a novel’s worth (5 totaling 38k words unedited) of stories for Book One. And started Book Two this week. Having a lot of fun, which is what matters to me.
Heather 5 has begun to spiral down into the massive final cataclysm that will wrap up five books of Heather’s War. Dropping next year on a schedule TBD. And setting up Veronika for a series after that, because I still have a LOT of blank spaces on the various maps to explore at some point.
Need to reread Ollie soon, so I can finish that series off as well. That gives me 9/12 of 2026. Wanna write some more Scattered Tribes, because that’s fun. Got Marrakesh 6 done for a slot next year. And more things planned.
Busy.
Dojo work continues to be challenging fun. BuDo. The way of violence, for lack of subtleties. But also reading a lot of that deeply philosophical stuff that you get with people who make it a lifestyle. Focused primarily on GoJu Ryu Karate, but also expanding into Naha-te and other things, because all martial arts have things to teach you if you are willing to listen. And you should be, because you don’t know everything. None of us do.
Work on the Tiny Greathall also brings me joy. Sat out there and had a phone call the other day. Need to move the refrigerator out and get it set up. Need to do a lot of things, but it is my space and I like it. Those of you coming for the bbq will get to see what I’ve done.
Not a lot past that. Keeping the pace. Keeping the faith. Keeping the dream.
Y’all hang in there.
Oh: WORLD CON IS IN SEATTLE in August. Knight Errant (A’Zedi Survey Corps, Book One) is out. 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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