[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.]

Congrats, no more Kickstarter news, because it wraps up in a few hours. Made it. Will build a Volume 6 for backers, who will get six other stories plus I will write a fifth Brother Jon for Harry.

Date TBD, because busy.

A little fried this morning. Didn’t sleep well because could never unwind from yesterday sufficiently.

Normal Monday, I go have breakfast at The Corner. Then down to the coffee shop and I write on the spare phone. Started a new novella there yesterday, after finishing two other stories over the weekend, not realizing how close either was to done.

Middle of coffee, the GM texts everyone that he has woken up with a migraine, and is crashing. Good.

I wander down to the bookstore when it opens and sit to write, but end up talking with a fellow I only kinda knew before yesterday. Regular in the shop, and his daughter is in our writing group.

Turns out he completed his PhD in Physics at Berkeley in the 70s. WAY freaking smart. Really nice. We talked for more than two hours because he’s retired and I didn’t have game.

Then wandered over to the library to do duolingo because outdoor benches somewhat isolated. Wander back, and GM and sweetie were headed to bookstore for coffee while doing errands, so sit with them for a while chatting. Head over to the bar across the street from the dojo and write there for a while with a glass of root beer. (They have excellent root beer this time.)

Sensei wanders in around 4, as usual, and we end up doing a DEEP dive on dojo principles. GoJu Karate, but he’s got a particular throwback to Miyagi Sensei in his approach, and is working on formulating forty+ years of martial arts into a coherent legacy. And doing a fantastic job of boiling it down, often using me as a sounding board.

Then dojo, where he sends me off to work up a sweat doing kata while he works with the junior students still learning kata #2 (Seisan). Grind. Sweat. Work.

More work.

Eventually, I realize that my wife is sitting in the audience. And that he had on his red belt, which he only wears for belt tests.

Mine.

Green to Brown. (White/Green/Brown/Black)

After everything is done, a group of us go back over to the pub for a pint. He points out, “You realize that all those extra credit things I had you do were actually what the black belt test contains, right?”

Oh, yeah. I felt that. LOTS of extra credit tests. And I still have a lot of polish work ahead of me, but I have the basics of kata, forms, partner drills, and principles down.

Refine. You can learn Sanchin in an hour, then spend a lifetime discovering more and more little facets of it. Seisan and Sanseru and Yama No Sai are all the same.

But I left it all on the dojo floor last night, and I’m not sure there exists enough coffee today. I did order a brown belt and it will arrive shortly. (He doesn’t provide belts. You get your own, but he has threatened to make an exception when I reach black, as I will likely be his first black belt student in the new curriculum when I get there in another year or whenever.)

Sigh.

Also started Kincaide’s War #3 this last week. Ships of Heaven. Will be 170k long when I get there. Only about 20k now. Gonna be a while. Got a lot of other things in the can to pub. And the erotica penname woke up and wanted to write things, so more is coming over there soon. Got one to come out shortly. Got another finished and needing polish and editing.

February however, will be insane, as I’ll be teaching at Superstars in Colorado and still have things to finish for the trip.

But other than exhaustion, not doing much today but trying to write and maybe recover. Baking for the trip. Slide decks to finalize. Sample story to finalize.

Crash, and own a brown belt.

And celebrate, when I stop and remember the journey I’ve been on.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

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