Caged forever? Kind of

Plushie came off cage rest Tuesday in the sense his back has healed up. However it’s never going to be right — back issues are part of his breed — so he’s still in a cage. When we can, we put him in a cage on the couch, often with Trixie as you see here. When he’s too rowdy, we put him back in the cage on the floor, sometimes with me joining him. The thing is, his back will go out again if he jumps enough or climbs enough stairs so we’re determined to avoid that and postpone the next incident as long as possible. The cage stops him from jumping off the couch, or more likely on and off, on and off ..

It’s still better. He can sleep with us on the bed at night (we have a cage around it too — I know, it does sound rather kinky) and he’s much happier. And we can take him for long walks again. Overall it’s inconvenient but he’s our boy and he’s worth it. And TYG is still working a lot downstairs which takes some of the pressure off me.

I got more work done on editing Southern Discomfort. I didn’t get as far as expected because I had to rewrite one scene with the FBI, then go over it a couple of times. I’d gotten some technical points about bombs wrong and when I fixed that, I realized other parts of the scene would have to change. The scene’s better now, of course.

I went over my notes on the first draft of Let No Man Put Asunder and began thinking about how to improve the second draft (I’ll have some discussion in the coming weeks). I don’t know that I want to work out a full outline for the next draft but there are issues with the plot and character arc I need to address. If I can fix them, I think I’m in good shape.

I wrote a piece for The Local Reporter about a memorial this Sunday for an 1890s lynching victim. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I wrote about that god-awful cliche, the Hero vs. Hero story; the annoyance of titles that give away the big reveal; and the way the quality of a comic-book can rise and fall. While it’s not central to any of the articles, this shot of Dr. Doom after his mind has taken over Daredevil’s body was still worth mentioning — seriously, a super-genius like Doom can’t even suspect that DD is blind?#SFWApro. Art by Gene Colan, all rights remain with current holder.