I had planned to get a lot of work done on Let No Man Put Asunder this week, as well as the short story Only the Lonely Can Slay. Neither happened. The short story — well, I know there’s a story there, but I can’t make it work past the first couple of scenes. Frustrating but I’ll keep pushing.
The novel? I left in the middle of a fight scene and I’m still not sure how to resolve it. Eventually, even if I’m 
unsure, I’ll have to forge ahead but the morning I sat down and worked on it …. it didn’t happen. Part of the problem is that (I know I’ve mentioned this before), Plushie likes climbing into my lap, then stretching out. This leaves me in an awkward physical position for writing, especially as he invariably squishes my crotch in the process. But he’s so cute and we won’t have him forever so I can’t say no.
Another factor was that I started freelancing for The Local Reporter, a not-for-profit online newspaper in Chapel Hill (part of the same city as Durham and Raleigh even if technically they’re three different places). I hit on the idea of covering some issues involving a strip mall where the local management may be squeezing out local businesses (or maybe not). Trouble was, nobody called me back.
This isn’t unusual with business owners — there’s more pressure on government officials to respond promptly — but back when I worked for the Destin Log, it wasn’t this bad. But of course, Destin was a town of 10,000; Chapel Hill’s six times that and we’re not the paper of record the same way. So it’s not surprising, Though it’s annoying that even after repeat calling, I couldn’t get anywhere.
The thing is, I didn’t want to start writing fiction and have the anticipated call-backs distract me (I’ll get to what I did work on in a second). So that cost me a day. At the Log I could find something else to work on and even if just twiddled my thumbs (it happened sometimes) I was still on the clock. I’m not getting paid for waiting now and I’m much busier writing than when I did stories for the Raleigh Public Recorder a decade ago. I couldn’t get the rhythm right to make best use of my time. Next week I’ll have to fix that.
What did fill my time? Well I finished the first draft of Savage Adventures, my book on the Doc Savage series. It took more rewriting of my blog posts than I anticipated and I have a bunch of notes where I’ll want to expand or clarify things for the book. I’d sooner have done fiction but it’s good I’m ahead of the game on this one.
And 19-Infinity is now live for paperback order and ebook pre-order (it doesn’t list all the reetailers yet). I’d have preferred to release the paperback simultaneous with the ebook, which I’m putting out in August; hopefully that will give me time to do a little extra promotion. But I’m heading to Con-Gregate next month and I wanted at least a few copies to sell, so … Finishing that took quite a bit of time but again, it’s done ahead of schedule (except the promotion part).
Like I said, not the week I’d planned but a productive one.
#SFWApro. Doc Savage cover by James Bama; 19-Infinity cover by Kemp Ward. All rights remain with current holders.
