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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(Title taken from Rudyard Kipling. I’ve used it before).
Wednesday is, as we all know, hump day — once we pass it, we’re on the downhill slide toward the weekend. Lately, however, I seem to be having trouble getting over the hump. My Wednesday is a slog.
Part of that this Wednesday was Plush Dudley (seen in an older photo while he was still on cage rest). Usually he sleeps most of the afternoon. For whatever reason, he was lively. Bark. Whine. Try to get my attention. Licking my feet. A lot. I finally had to give up getting work done for the last couple of hours, though I wasn’t able to read or relax much either.
He’s still my boy.
Even before that, I was struggling to write. I had a relatively simple article to write on Carrboro’s budget discussions but it turned into a plodding exercise, though I think the results were good. Reflecting on it, I realized one problem is Monday and Tuesday evenings. Monday I work into the evening to make up for us taking the dogs to PT during the day; Tuesday I often have my Zoom writer’s group. After I finish, it’s typically another hour to take care of the dogs. I end up going to sleep later than usual and I don’t usually make it up in the morning. This Wednesday that left me tired; I also woke up late (compensating for Tuesday’s late night) which always throws me off my game. Mentally that left me behind the eight-ball.
Monday and Tuesday were productive though. I worked on Savage Adventures, went through all the books where my manuscript was unclear (why did Doc Savage do X? What exactly was the villain’s plan?) and made the corrections. This draft is done!!!!!
Next up: rereading some of my Doc Savage reference books for anything worth adding, working on the bibliography, then printing the manuscript out and proofing it. Then the writing is done and I can look at indexing (sigh), finding a cover and I’ll be ready to rock.
Thursday I put in more time writing for The Local Reporter. I got in one good story about Chapel Hill’s budget decisions — they have $3 million left over from fiscal year 2025 to spend — but nothing else. Nobody returned my calls. Annoying. However I already have the materials for one, possibly two stories for next week, and there’s a Carrboro Council meeting. So I’ll be in good shape.
And this blog is still getting lots more hits than average. Hi there, whoever you are. I hope you stick around. If nothing else, the pet photos are adorable.
Doc Savage cover by James Bama, all rights to images remain with current holders.
Thursday I only worked a half-day because the housekeepers were here. Sitting in the spare bedroom with all the pets to keep them out of the way (and make sure Snowdrop and Wisp don’t run out) does not inspire creative work. For the first time in a few months, they showed up late enough I could have made a full work day out of it; by the time I realized that I’d turned my brain off.
And Tuesday I took one of my days off to devote to TYG and my “death document” — instructions about our finances, ordering dog drugs, when to give dog drugs, plans for our bodies. Because contrary to this Nick Cardy cover, death can come at any time. We’d like to be as much help to each other as we can.
I’ve been slack about updating the stuff I know but it turns out not much has changed since the last time I checked — Trixie has one added med, little things like that. Still it’s good to keep everything current and good to know that it is.
With Friday devoted to stuff like blogging and catching up on email, that left two days. I got another chunk of Savage Adventures rewritten, though not as much as I’d like. Then I had my work for The Local Reporter: a story on the snowfall and how local towns dealt with it (not up yet), one on how Carrboro is scoring its performance and one on what the former Chapel Hill Weekly was reporting when it started publishing in 1923 (“On the whole, Chapel Hill is ultra-conservative in the matter of hats.”).
As I mentioned a while back, they recently lost one of their government reporters so I’m doing more work. Which is good — more money — but it’s frustrating how much work I have to do to find enough stuff to write about (it consumes a surprising amount of time). The reporting and writing is relatively simple. But such is life.
I anticipate being way more productive next week.
One thing that did surprise me about this week — this blog has racked up 1,500 views the past two days. While there are times I can explain a rush in traffic, like my posts about Taylor Swift a couple of years back, I have no idea what triggered it. None of my specific posts have received a huge hit either. I’m not complaining of course and if any of y’all are reading this, thanks for visiting.
All rights to cover image remain with current holder.
LIBERTY GIRL by Barry Reese was a fun novella based on the same-name indy comic book about the eponymous Wonder Woman-like superhero vanishing in WW II and returning in the present a la Captain America (but with more thought to the gulf between Then and Now). Fun, though hardly groundbreaking; what made it work for me is that the golden-eyed, bronze-skinned protagonist is Doc Savage’s daughter (though as with my own The Savage Year they can’t spell it out). I might take a look at the comic some time, though it appears it’s only available in single issues rather than a trade paperback.
The sixth volume of BOMBSHELLS, War Stories (cover by Ant Lucia) has Amanda Waller’s new Sucide Squad stop Nazi ally Edward Nigma from unleashing the worst of the Tenebrae while large numbers of supernaturals and superhumans gather at the Siege of Leningrad where Kryptonian Faora Hu-Ul reveals her master plan for Earth. As usual this was fun, though it also feels a little too sprawling, with characters we’ve never met (like Faora) showing up at the end and other plotlines apparently vanishing (this is the final volume but perhaps there’s some resolution in the spinoff Bombshells: United).
NINETEEN SEVENTY: The Seven Book One by Sarah M. Cradit is the first in a prequel series to a mythos (the House of Crimson and Clover) that I’ve never read. Here we see the future heads of the witch clan (though like many fictional witches they seem more psionic) as teens in 1970 variously coping with first love, periods of hedonism, Duty Vs. Love, Finishing School vs. Saving the World etc. This was better than most Buy This Book In The Series Cheap offers on Kindle, enough I might pick up more in the series later. However it’s both a prequel and an installment (there are several more 1970s set books) which is a little frustrating, and suffers from repeated anachronisms such as “trophy wife” and “chill pill” as phrases. I still enjoyed it.
