Category Archives: Doc Savage

My battle plan survived, sort of

As I’ve talked about before, one of the military rules of thumb is that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. I knew this week would demolish any regular plan, so I adjusted accordingly.

(Photos are all from our yard, like this morning’s post. Here we have Mr. Squirrel acrobatically chowing down on the suet we put out for the birds)

This week, we began a renovation project. The master bathroom bathtub has enough problems we decided it was worth fixing them now rather than waiting until they become serious major problems. If you’ve ever heard that major renovations are a massive pain, it’s true. Knowing that I decided to work on Savage Adventures because it’s nonfiction and editing the manuscript doesn’t take creative thought the way resuming work on Let No Man Put Asunder would.

It was as bad as I’d figured and then some. As TYG normally works her IT gig in the master bedroom, she relocated into the spare bedroom and moved her bathroom stuff into mine. I’d almost forgotten how many things she has on her bathroom counter so mine is quite cluttered now.

A much bigger issue is that with people coming in and out, we worried the cats would freak, particularly Snowdrop, and bolt out away from the strangers. If they were spending the day sleeping upstairs we could simply lock them in. The past couple of weeks they’ve been hanging out in the living room so I had to keep constant watch they weren’t sitting too close to the door. Fortunately neither of them tried to get out, though they clearly weren’t happy.

That, coupled with dealing with the contractor if they had questions or requests (TYG did some of that, but with Zoom meetings to attend she can’t do all of it), plus the jarring noises from upstairs left me somewhat frazzled. Because I concentrated on Savage Adventures I was at least somewhat productive. I went through the book and made sure all the Doc Savage novels were attributed correctly; while Lester Dent wrote most of them, Street and Smith assigned other writers to some, and Dent occasionally used ghostwriters. I edited the first three chapters as well. The rest of the time I did some blogging, paid bills, etc. Nothing super-demanding. If not a spectacular workweek, I don’t feel I fell down on the job either.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about toxic masculinity, reposted some book reviews from this blog, and posted about Southern Discomfort coming out (same post as I put up here, more or less). And that’s about it.

The contractors will be back Monday-Wednesday next week. I’m slightly more ambitious about what I plan to do. Wish me luck living up to my plans.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Nonfiction, Personal, Time management and goals, Writing

So where did I misplace my mojo this week?

I’m honestly not sure, but whenever I sat down to work, my creative juices were not flowing.

Stuff which didn’t require creativity went fine. I finished the draft of Savage Adventures, which is not a small thing. One more draft should do it, a combined line edit with fact-checking (did I get the names of all the characters right, for instance). However I wanted to make progress on fiction as well and my mind just balked.

Short stories? No idea how to progress.

Rewrite of Let No Man Put Asunder? Ditto.

I did take the beginnings of two new untitled stories I worked on last week and share them with the writing group. The feedback satisfied me they’re worth working on and some of the suggestions were interesting (could they be part of the same novel? Probably not but if I could think of a way …). That was it, though.

I also didn’t do as well as usual with our dogs’ home PT care, or my own exercise regimen for that matter.

I did find that if I concentrate my various non-writing tasks — errands, bills, submissions to our pet insurance, Trupanion — in the first hour of work this gets them taken care of and lets me concentrate better the rest of the day. That helped with Savage Adventures at least.

Part of it may be that I’m still sleep-deprived — a couple of bad nights, no nights quite good enough to catch up. Plush Dudley being extremely restless is a big part of it. Sometimes I think he just likes to sleep on my side of the bed and he knows if he makes enough trouble, I’ll have to move and try to sleep in the spare bedroom. Wicked boy.

He’s so stinking cute, though.

Part of the problem may be that I haven’t had much break from our various pets the past month and a half, except when I’m out running errands. Over time it erodes my personal space and that does get draining.

I did get to attend my Genre Book Club, as I discussed over at Atomic Junk Shop. That was fun. And I had lunch with one of my writing friends, the first time I’ve managed that in a while.

Tune in next week for (hopefully) a better result! Cover by James Bama, all rights to image remain with current holder.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Nonfiction, Personal, Short Stories, Southern Discomfort, Story Problems, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

One of those “God says ha!” weeks, but he didn’t laugh too loudly.

The title, for anyone who hasn’t heard the phrase refers to the line “if you want to make god laugh, tell him your plasn.” After the mess of our a.c. dying for two weeks, last week was a welcome lurch back toward normal. I’d hoped this week would be better still. Instead it turned way chaotic, though I still got some work done.

First off, I’m happy to report that feeding Plushie a fatty treat last Friday did not bring on a surge of pancreatitis or diarrhea. Phew! However pet drama did suck up a lot of time. There’s some utility work being done in our neighborhood so a crew went through last week and painted lines on lawns to indicate existing cables, pipes and conduits. Plushie rolled on the paint Monday, getting it all over his face. We had to give him an unplanned bath before he started licking it off, which consumed quite a bit of time.

Then because Trixie’s been licking and chewing on her paws, I took her in later that afternoon. They gave us some antibiotic wipes for her paws; they seem to be doing the trick.

Tuesday we’d planned to take Snowdrop in for his annual checkup. There was a miscommunication with our vet so that didn’t happen. However TYG worried Plushie had a new eye problem so I took him in to the vet. No eye problem as it turned out (other than the old ones). I’d tease her about it but she’s right often enough it’s wise to listen when she worries.

Wednesday I had my annual dermatology checkup (all good). Thursday I structured my schedule around lunch with a friend but they had to cancel. I think I’ve managed one lunch out with friends this year — either they’re busy or stressed or sick — and it’s disappointing. Today we had a plumber coming to fix an outside tap (under warranty so no fee), the gutter cleaners and Wisp has a sore spot so I was supposed to take her to the vet. She did not cooperate so we had to reschedule but only after a quarter-hour’s efforts.

All those things chop up the day into smaller chunks. Each time I finish one it takes added time to refocus. The non-writing time adds up. Plus I had another lousy week of sleep: Plush Dudley’s been fidgeting night after night, and since he likes to lie next to me (or sometimes climb on me) that doesn’t work out well.

That said, work did get done, mostly editing on the final section of Savage Adventures. And Southern Discomfort will definitely go live as an ebook next month as I’ve worked the last kinks out of the manuscript. I think I’ve fixed the cover for the paperback version; I’ve ordered a copy to be sure. Preorder links to follow.

Speaking of links, here’s my account of Carrboro’s storm season preparations. At Atomic Junk Shop I look at the Bronze Age and processed cheese.

And on a happy note, yesterday TYG and I celebrated our fifteenth anniversary. Astonishingly she’s not done with me yet. Which suits me fine. We had dinner at Sage, which remains our favorite Durham restaurant and traded gifts (honey and cookies for me, a medical book for her).

Send positive thoughts that next week will be more productive.

Cover art by James Bama, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Personal, Southern Discomfort, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

Well, this week could have gone better

Tuesday, the HVAC repair crew showed up with the part to fix our air conditioning. After nine days with no a/c we were excited, though half fearful something else would go wrong.

Something else did. Turns out the compressor broke because something called a TVX broke so they had to order a TVX replacement. That left us broken and miserable the rest of the day. I wound up missing writing group and a Con-Tinual panel.

Next day, TYG got a second portable air-conditioning unit which we set up in the spare bedroom. That helped a lot, even lowering the temperature downstairs. I checked with the vet who assured me the cats would not die at 85 degrees in the house, provided they had water and a cool place to stretch out (they had both). Then Thursday, the part came in, they fixed it up and the heat is now back to normal.

This did not do my writing any good, of course. I made progress on Savage Adventures (Doc Savage cover here by Bob Larkin), rewriting up through the start of 1943. Only about 15,000 words to go this draft. But everything else … no. Nor exercise. It would have been easier if we’d been able to open windows or doors, but the cats might have gotten out, so we gritted our teeth. I did work up in the bedroom with TYG and the pups for a couple of days — we have one of the portable units there — but it’s always distracting when we’re working at close quarters.

Oh, and I got my first turn-down of the year, for All Happily Families, from Bourbon Penn. Does not dismay me at all, I’m happy to be submitting shorts again after a long time without.

I really, really, really hope for a smooth June. Fingers crossed.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Nonfiction, Personal, Short Stories, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

Henry Kuttner, D&D and a couple of short things read

AHEAD OF TIME is a Henry Kuttner short story collection drawing on his 1940s and early 1950s work; “Ghost,” for example, has a computer but as the word isn’t coined yet (the word still meant a human who computed numbers) it’s a “thinking machine.” Other stories involve celebrity head-hunters, alien peacemakers, suicidal robots and the immortal Hogben mutants of the Appalachians (heavy on the hillbilly stereotypes but still funny). I particularly liked “Camouflage” which feels like it’s in conversation with his wife CL Moore’s “No Woman Born” as the cyborg protagonist proves he’s as human as the gang of pirates he’s fighting (“I told you Tom, you’d forget our friendship before I did.”). Good stuff

Kuttner’s The Dark World has always felt to me like he’s knocking off A. Merritt’s Dwellers in the Mirage. THE VALLEY OF THE FLAME (cover by Ed Emshwiller) is also very Merrittesque, but more in style than a direct steal. For no discernible reason, this 1945 novel is set in the 1985 Amazon jungle, where the protagonist discovers a mystery that leads him to the lost land of Paititi. There an evolution meteor that landed 30 years ago has turned jaguars into cat people, speeding up existence in the lost land so that they’re civilization has (from their perspective) lasted for centuries. Now, though, the meteor is dying, which may devolve them into monsters; however a mad jaguar scientist’s plan to restimulate it may prove equally disastrous. The weirdly speeded-up life in Paititi is eerie and entertaining though I question Kuttner’s assumption that feline-evolved humanoids must be culturally different from us monkey people.

I could have sworn I reviewed SLAYING THE DRAGON: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons by Ben Riggs, a year and a half ago when I read it but nope. A very good job looking at the birth of the game in the 1970s and how it struggled despite being one of the coolest entertainment options out there (obviously my definition of “cool” is not universal). Under co-creator Gary Gygax’ tenure as company boss, it suffered from “we’re rich, let’s blow lots of money” syndrome. It gained, however, from the religious right denouncing it as Satan’s tool for initiating kids into black magic — that made an innocuous game experience as wild and rebellious as listening to death metal!

After Lorraine Williams bought a majority share in the company it faced other problems: complicated, unsound financing arrangements, bad decisions (favoring bookstores for distribution and ignoring gaming/hobby stores) and poor treatment of its creative personnel. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s Dragonlance books launched a long line of D&D tie-in books but they wound up leaving the company and having even bigger success writing their own stuff. Despite which, of course, D&D endures and still has devoted players; I’m no longer one of them but I’m glad lots of people are.

Werwile of the Crystal Crypt was a pulp short story by comics legend Gardner Fox that I read simply from curiosity what a werwile is. It turns out it’s just the title of the Satan figure who destroyed the galaxy’s first civilization; can Nuala, a beautiful super-genius preserved in suspended animation, defeat him with the help of a “present-day” space adventurer? This is familiar pulp stuff, fun but not up to the level of Fox’s later comics SF stories (e.g., “The Invisible Dinosaur” with the Murphy Anderson cover). And the ending is horrifically sexist: Nuala gets mind-wiped in the final battle, losing her memories and her intelligence which delights the hero — now she’ll be happy to marry him and become a perfect little homemaker!

One of pulp hero Doc Savage’s best-known gadgets was his invention of mercy bullets that tranquilize their target rather than killing or injuring. I never much thought about that as a tween fan of the series — tranquilizer darts were familiar from lots of TV shows — but while working on Savage Adventures I began wondering what the state of the tech was in the 1930s. On the Trail of the Mercy Bullet: Pain, Scientific Showmanship and the early history of animal tranquilizing, c. 1912-1932 by Mia Uys answered my question. Uys looks at one Captain Barnett who developed a prototype tranquilizer dart and coined the “mercy bullet” term.

Barnett wasn’t the first; a 1912 inventor hit on the idea of putting grooves in bullets and morphia particles in the grooves, though nothing came of it. Barnett’s concept involved bullets that were miniature hypodermics; despite dubious effectiveness in animal capture he was still promoting it in radio and in-person lectures in the early 1930s. Presumably he inspired Dent to create Doc’s armaments, though firing them from a machine gun, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t do serious injury or give the target too much of a dose if they were hit by multiple drafts.

All rights to images remains with current holders.


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Filed under Doc Savage, Reading

No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. And this is like fourth contact or something

As I’ve mentioned previously, when I set my goals for 2026, I factored in that I’d be working on proofing and indexing Watching Jekyll and Hyde. And taking some time off. And allowing a couple of weeks for whatever problems might crop up and derail me.

You may also recall that our dogs’ gross digestive upsets already used up the emergency time I’d set aside. Life, alas, continued throwing emergencies our way. Last Sunday, TYG pointed out the thermostat showed the house was a higher temperature than she’d set. I’d noticed this over the previous couple of days but thought she’d just set it higher than usual. Nope. So we called our HVAC people, they sent someone out … compressor is dead. Covered by warranty so it won’t cost us to replace it, other than the diagnostic visit. But it has to be ordered from the factory which meant we had to spend this week sans A/C. And wouldn’t you know, the temperatures got up into the 90s?

Fortunately TYG acquired a portable A/C unit a while back; it’s big and bulky but we can plug it anywhere. It made the bedroom upstairs livable. The rest of the house, not so much? Nobody passed out from heat exhaustion (including the pets) but day after day it got increasingly, cumulatively exhausting. It didn’t help that I couldn’t sleep. Partly the heat, partly that TYG was restless and I’m too light a sleeper not to wake if she gets up.

So heat, plus exhaustion, plus umpty-zillion extra chores that turned up. Researching window air conditioners (we decided not to get one) and pet hotels (not practical — the cats would freak). Spending what seemed like two hours helping TYG fix a problem with the app controlling our thermostat. Various other odds and ends that popped up out of nowhere. Trying to tie some of our pet insurance reimbursements. As my title says, my battle plan did not survive.

I did get more work done on Savage Adventures and a Local Reporter story about a proposed cut to the Chapel Hill Library budget (not online yet). At Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about the importance of good cover art even for reprint book.

And that’s pretty much it. Though several older Con-Tinual panels are now online on Facebook: on favorite nonfiction history books, C and D list comics characters and Swamp Thing.

Fortunately the weather turned cooler this morning. The house is cooling off though it’s a slow process. The cool weather should last until Tuesday when the HVAC is up and running again.

Still, every week of lost time is, well, lost. And I hate that.

Cover art by James Bama. All rights to image remain with current holders.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Nonfiction, Personal, Southern Discomfort, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals

Sing hosannas and release the doves!

This week came the day we dreaded — Wisp going to the vet! She gets warier every year, plus we can’t feed her after midnight. Which means Snowdrop can’t get any food either as they eat together.

Fortunately it was mostly smooth sailing. The cats sat by where their bowls go, but didn’t complain too much. TYG was able to grab Wisp and throw her in the big cage; after about half an hour of plaintive meowing, I took her in.

The good news: she’s in great shape. Some tartar on a back tooth, only .25 pounds heavier than last year (we’d thought she’d put on a lot more weight). And she forgave us fairly quickly.

It was a week with a lot of appointments like that, all of them turning out well. I had a dental appointment Wednesday (checkup and cleaning), then Plushie had his eye checkup later that afternoon (still in great shape). Good news, but a lot of time taken up. Plus I had to submit a bunch of invoices to our various insurers for online purchases.

The downside, of course, was that all those appointments ate up time. Plus, of course, time after each to recover and refocus my thoughts. On top of which I had a late night Tuesday and Wednesday which left me zonked on Thursday. Despite which, I got some good work done. The best thing is that I successfully formatted Southern Discomfort for Draft2Digital and Amazon. Draft2Digital is invaluable but their ebook formatting sometimes makes my Word formatting look wonky. That’s now fixed. And D2D will provide me with a PDF I can upload to Amazon.

I did some work on Savage Adventures. I really need to get to work on a cover artist ASAP. Not that I’m close to done, but once I am, I’d like to move much faster than I did with Southern Discomfort. Speaking of which, the cover is done for the digital version (Amazon needs some technical tweaks); I’ll announce a release date next week.

I read “Honey on the Grave” to the writing group. They really liked it, which was great; it’s only about my fourth draft and it usually takes many more before a story is any good. They also gave me some suggestions for polishing it, which I will look at later this month. The meeting was the reason I was up late Tuesday; we discovered Zoom was automatically recording our readings with AI and because they guy who officially hosted it is no longer with the group, we can’t do anything to turn it off. We set up a new Zoom link with myself and one of the other writers as co-hosts; however some people had bookmarked the old link rather than clicking on it from the group’s webpage so we had to go find them and tip them off. A learning experience.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I reviewed some books about African-American films and reposted my old review about Brother From Another Planet.

On the downside, waking up late led to me missing much of my usual morning exercise and stretching sessions. Next week should be better, though — zero appointments.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Nonfiction, Short Stories, Southern Discomfort, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

March was a month that happened …

Despite Plushie’s fortnight of diarrhea, it was fairly productive. Of course, as I’ve mentioned before, that’s partly because of The Local Reporter switching to monthly so I didn’t have actual paying gigs distracting me. I’ll be back to work on it next week, prepping for the April issue.

I got close to 34,000 words rewritten on Let No Man Put Asunder, redrafted “Mage’s Masquerade” and “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” and proofed the first chunk of Savage Adventures. I applied for a couple of writing jobs (remote) and started checking various short fiction markets — no luck so far. And we made it through diarrhea and out the other side er, so to speak. And the multiple trips to tire places or our VW dealer.

Yes, it’s mostly Snowdrop photos today. I think he’s worth it.

This week was choppy, with enough errands Wednesday it was a struggle to get anything done. Still, overall satisfactory. I got another 3,500 words finished on Asunder (that was what I struggled to complete Wednesday). I reread “Oh the Places You’ll Go” and I think I’ve finally finished it. I’ll proof it later this month but I’m satisfied I’ve fixed everything I didn’t like (or my beta readers didn’t like). First story finished in a long while. I read “Mage’s Masquerade” to the writing group; the overall reaction was way favorable though with several slight changes. For example it comes off as if Sinclair is waaaay older than Cecily; while that’s not out of line for a Regency plot, it’s a sensitive enough subject I’m going to make it clear he’s maybe a decade her senior, nothing more.

Finding markets for two 7,000 word short stories will be a challenge. But I can always publish them in another collection of my work.

I got several thousand words of Savage Adventures proofed and polished and I started looking for a cover artist. No luck so far.

I also began editing my Hellboy Chronology. At first I was only going to update it to add one of the new Hellboy-verse TPBs. However I wound up converting it to blocks which threw the spacing and the whole look of the page out of whack. I’ve begun correcting for that, though I’m only up through the 1960s. Please be patient as I keep working. All the information is still good.

Over at Con-Tinual I talked about The Worlds of Andre Norton, Favorite Superhero Moments, the return of Superboy, now all available on FB at the links.

Week is almost over, as I’m stopping work early to cook something for TYG. Have a great weekend, y’all.

Cover by James Bama, all rights remain with current holder.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Nonfiction, Short Stories, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

Everything everywhere all at once on Monday!

As I said last month, when I budgeted time off for emergencies into my year’s goals, I didn’t anticipate losing a week to dog problems this soon.

Similarly, while I budgeted several hours for errands into my plans for March, I didn’t expect to use them up last Monday.

I knew it would be a long day because we were taking the dogs to their PT session and it included Plushie’s recheck, adding time. Plus TYG had a couple of necessary errands on the way home, adding time. Still, I’d planned for that: my writing time would be all Savage Adventures. Proofing it doesn’t require the same creative energy as writing fiction and if the workday broke into chunks I could adapt to that too.

Unfortunately Trixie had been peeing in the house the past couple of days, or getting really frantic to go out, so we’d scheduled an afternoon vet visit for her. Still had hopes of getting stuff done … but on the way to PT, our rear left tire took a nail. No immediate threat — it served as its own hole plug — but once we got back I had to take it down to a tire place. They said probably a half-hour; it wasn’t. In fairness I’d asked about patching and they decided it needed replacing. I thought about getting a second opinion but TYG said go ahead and pay it. I was happy not to take more time.

So Monday was a wash as far as doing anything writerly. An hour of Savage Adventures, nothing more. However Trixie’s on antibiotics for a UTI and improving and the rehab vet is very pleased with Plush Dudley’s progress — we may not see much improvement but she doesn’t anticipate things getting worse or having to go through another surgery. Yay.

That said, the week went reasonably well; it helped that The Local Reporter is still on hiatus (I do hope we’re back in action soon, though). I got about 10,000 words done on Let No Man Put Asunder and around 7000 on The Impossible Takes a Little Longer. Part of the work on the latter book was rewriting Chapter Two — normally I don’t go back until a draft is finished but so much bugged me about the chapter I took the time to fix it.

And that was it, other than a post about awkward film endings over at Atomic Junk Shop. Yesterday the cleaners were in and that never works out well for getting anything done. Still, getting some fiction written always feels good. Ditto knowing the dogs are in good health.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Nonfiction, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

This week, I ate my own homework

Which is to say, not much done.

In fairness, part of that carried over from last week’s dog chaos. We’ve only now reached the end of all the added drugs they’re getting. and spacing them out, adjusting them to the “don’t give with food” rules, etc. means the regimen sucks up more time (plus Plush Dudley is increasingly uncooperative about eating his meds). And Monday Trixie had her recheck at Peak Paws (our PT place) and with added errands on the way home, I wound up starting work Monday way later than usual.

(No, I don’t know why she’s sniffing Plushie).

I rewrote the introduction to Savage Adventures when it hit me that I bog down in the history of the pulps instead of selling why Doc Savage is cool to read (and read about). I turned in two Local Reporter articles, one on how Carrboro’s funding stormwater management projects and a debate in Chapel Hill on taking a stand against President Toddler’s anti-immigration raids. And I got a bunch of stuff done on various tasks — picking up pet meds, contacting contractors, etc.

And that was pretty much it. The week kind of evaporated. I always have a fear that if I let that happen once, I’ll let it happen again, and again, and I’ll end up with nothing but a hatful of rain (to borrow from the title of an old film). I know that’s not true, but still.

The flip side: as the 501(c) non-profit Local Reporter takes a two week pause I have more time but now I have less money coming in. Not that the wolf’s at the door but I do take pride in contributing to household bills.

February overall was disappointing for fiction writing. Between the dogs and the snow I got almost no fiction written. On the plus side I did complete the latest draft of Savage Adventures; updated my “in case of my death” paperwork; provided my obligatory critiques for some of the stories in Break the Sky (as it’s a collaborative anthology, we all edit each other); donated blood today; and made more money than usual, thanks to The Local Reporter. On the downside, my social life has been quiet, as either my schedule or my friends’ proved unworkable (one coffee date, very short due to an emergency on their part).

However the week wasn’t all wasted. Monday I got an FB message from a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor (an excellent paper — I subscribed for years). Between the president declaring a release of the government’s UFO-related files (I do not expect any shocking revelations) and the upcoming movie Project Hail Mary, reporter Stephen Humphries came up with the idea of interviewing me, as an expert in ET-visitor films, about movies, real-life UFO beliefs and how they interact. One reason I didn’t get more work done is that I pored over The Aliens Are Here, refreshing my mind on the subject. It paid off — it was a 45 minute interview and I think I talked intelligently for all of it. I’ll link to the article when it comes out.

On that note, have a good weekend. All rights to images remain with current holders; Doc Savage cover by James Bama.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Nonfiction, Short Stories, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing