[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.]
More Karate news, just ‘cause. Planted a makawara over the weekend. “Planted.”
Five gallon bucket. Upright 2×6. 60# bag of instant concrete. Assemble and add water. Let cure for a week.
Plant.
Training the fists involves punching things. Set in the ground, even a 100# anchor will give, and it is padded, so you practice without injury. Still raining and settling, so I won’t strike it for a few days, but it is there. Part of the black belt test, along with Hojo Undo (training with certain equipment. Hammers to swing. Jars to carry. Maces to crunch. Etc.)
But this is a lifetime sort of thing.
Writing: Finished the first Emmett McCall book. Urban Fantasy about a cat burglar and his partner, who happens to be a Marxist Goat. Yes, you heard me. First of a starting trilogy, right at 40k. Lots of fun and twists from what I usually write, but that was where writer-brain wanted to go.
After that, I sat down with Corsac Fox 6 & 7 and reread both. Then started 8, tentatively titled Sailing Into Darkness. What I promised at the end of 7, so making up new cultures and species as we explore Imperial Sector Thirty-Two, coreward from both 14 and 21.
Just started, so 7k in, but having fun. Got four Mick stories so far and sat down last night to actually start exploring where to take the longer arc. Gonna go dark, but that’s not a surprise.
I tend to bounce between emotional and genre extremes, as you have noted if you pay attention to these. Big, chewy space opera to little stories. Light to dark and back. Huge casts and small things.
Keeps me from writing the same story over and over again, which can happen to some writers if they aren’t forever stretching their minds. The ruts become channels of least resistance.
Ick.
Things like Marxist Goats. Or Zhyrgal Sulaymanov, all grown up now and doing things with Uly and Dan. Or Mick, dealing with his own skeletons while trying to uncover Andi’s. And why they both have ghosts. Got some ideas. Gonna be fun. Gonna be rude. Gonna be me.
Not a lot past that. Transition emotionally from Spring to Summer, but not a lot changes around here. Had a couple of strangers show up to the Writers Lunch.
Pardon. Couple of dork Robins running around below my window. Young adult male and possibly juvenile female following him around. Big brother little sister. Got lots of robins and I turned over an ant nest the other day to make a salad bar for them. HAPPY robins.
Back to story. And stuff.
Hope you survived the holiday mostly intact and not too badly hung over. Heavy drizzle here, so staying inside with coffee.
shade and sweet water,
b
West of the Mountains, WA
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