Category Archives: The Dog Ate My Homework

May 22, 2026 · 4:28 pm

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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May 15, 2026 · 4:30 pm

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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May 8, 2026 · 5:15 am

“Tell me about the lambs, Clarice. And feed me treats”

Last week we had the pups annual wellness checkups and multiple shots. Plushie doesn’t take shots well so they took precautions.

He was pretty stoic compared to his usual, though frantically struggling whenever he got a shock. Trixie is always stoic but she felt miserable the day after.

As for wellness, they’re both in good shape. The vet complimented us on what good care we take of them, which is always wonderful to hear.

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April 10, 2026 · 4:23 pm

That was not how I wanted to spend last Saturday!

It looked like a great day. TYG was going to be out for most of it so I figured on kicking back, snuggling the dogs and watching movies. Instead, the Internet went out a little before noon. I spent about five hours trying and failing to restore it. First turning it off, turning it on. Then going back to factory settings. Then going to the help desk. More unplugging and rebooting and unplugging and deleting the Google Home app, then restoring it to my phone, then deleting the routers from the app … finally it appeared it was an outage after all. Except fixing the area outage didn’t fix things.

Finally they sent out a tech the next day. Turns out the router had died. Everything’s working now but dang, that was not a fun period.

In more cheerful news, TYG cut the first rose of the year off our rose bush — we haven’t been good about trimming it so the bud was unbalancing it — and brought it inside. Fragrance is beautiful. Even Plush Dudley thinks so.

The rose has blossomed beautifully.

Writing? Not much to say. Most of this week was spent on taxes. I thought for a while I’d have to apply for the six-month extension (it’s an automatic Yes if you ask) but we’d have had to figure out enough of the tax bill we could send in a check for what we owe — so what’s the point? I went ahead, crunched the numbers and it looks like the hit won’t be terrible. I’ve been wrong before but I think I caught all the errors. And some of them were actually in the government’s favor, like forgetting to deduct the money I pay for this website.

I got several thousand more words of Savage Adventures proofed and did a rewrite of a couple of older stories I never finished. “Honey For the Grave” is one of the shortest things I’ve ever written, coming in under 3,000 words. After some tweaking it looked surprisingly good. If I had a market for it (I spent some time looking) I’d submit it. Instead, I’ll probably read it to the writing group soon. “Die and Let Live” (still working on the title) isn’t anywhere near finishing but I have the plot, the premise and the ending payoff clear. Now I have to find a way to tell the story without being so damn expository.

Plushie is in good shape, full of energy and no digestive issues. He’s more likely to snuggle in my lap than sleep on the floor, which reflects TYG trimming off all his mats (and perhaps his tummy not hurting). This gets uncomfortable after a while — I wind up sitting in an awkward position — but I won’t push him out. He’s sixteen in November, which is old for a shih tsu mix, and I want to give him the best dog life possible until then.

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April 3, 2026 · 3:37 pm

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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March 27, 2026 · 4:23 pm

Victory through air power! Or in this case, low-fat dog food

It appears Plush Dudley’s diarrhea drama is over.

Certainly it’s much reduced. He’s stopped pooping on the bed in the night and the accidents he did have this week were small before they dried up completely. It appears the root cause was pancreatitis reacting to too much fat in his diet — so from now on, it’s low fat diet for Plush Dudley. Cheerio, veggies, low fat kibble, low fat soft food (we’d already bought some for Trixie for similar reasons). And rice mixed in with soft food to help firm up his stool. Fortunately Plushie’s perfectly happy to eat Cheerios and vegetable chunks (and rice) so we don’t have to deny him treats.

On the plus side, he’s been so lively this week, it’s been amazing. Even before the problem went away, he was bounding around, wrestling with Trixie, walking with a bounce in his step. Possibly he’s feeling better than he has in a while. Also possibly, losing around four pounds has made him lighter and his joints less strained — lord knows I’d have a lot less bulk to move if I lost 20 percent of my body mass.

Dealing with diarrhea the first couple of days was demanding, especially as TYG had some stuff of her on she needed to get done. While I miss the weekly payments from The Local Reporter I would have gotten nothing of my own stuff done this week if I’d been covering Carrboro. I applied for a couple of telecommuting reporting gigs I found online, no answer yet. I’ll keep applying. Much as I like writing fiction, I also like bringing in money.

As to my own work, I got another 8,000 words on the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. So far it’s proceeding smoothly and I like my output. I also started two new stories when I wasn’t quite ready to do more on Asunder. Good Morning Starshine is a rewrite of a novel I wrote the first draft of years ago, then never got back to. Recently I’ve been trying without success, due to being unable to figure out the protagonist’s character. I’m not sure I’ve figured it out yet, but he does have a character and I’m forging forward with the strange story of a hippy heading to San Francisco for the Summer of Love, then finding she’s in 1987. Labyrinth of Books involves a disgruntled grad student stumbling into a strange bookstore with an even stranger salesclerk. I have no idea where this goes from there, though I did get past the part I’d plotted out in my head.

I also tackled the usual range of chores including taking the car in for a tire replacement and paying our vehicle registration online. Over at Atomic Junkshop I looked at what Marvel Comics publishes in the Marvel Universe—

— and at that mainstay of Silver Age Superman, the “imaginary” story.

I do hope the IRL demands on me and TYG ease up a little in April. Still, this wasn’t a bad week of writing given what I had to overcome.

Oh, and one cool thing: with Project Hail Mary in theaters, that Christian Science Monitor article quoting me about aliens is now live. I’m only one of the experts quoted — given how long the interview ran, I’m surprised Stephen Humphries didn’t use more (I guess when you work for a major newspaper, you can take the time). Still, that’s way cool.

Covers by Jack Kirby (top) and Carmine Infantino (bottom), all rights remain with current holders.

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March 20, 2026 · 4:33 pm

One of my goals for 2026 was to have a cool, fun birthday

I think that one goes in the “unachieved” pile.

Last weekend we trimmed Plushie’s fur, getting rid of all the mats and tangles. Given his bum leg, it seemed safer than taking him to a groomer where he’d end up standing a lot longer. We did it in the backyard, leaving lots of fur behind. Maybe that stressed him out which stressed out his digestive system. Sunday night, Plushie’s diarrhea returned. I realized this when he climbed off the bed and tried to run downstairs; I got dressed, not in time, and took him out after he’d done his business on the carpet. Again, later.

(Dudley’s before photo)

Monday night I couldn’t sleep; the conviction I’d have to wake up and clean up the mess alongside TYG got into my head and I couldn’t get rid of it. It turned out nothing happened; however during the first half of the week we did keep having to clean up small leakages. And then clean whatever sheets or towels he’d been sitting on. This takes time. So not a smooth week.

On my birthday eve, I slept like a log and woke up the next morning refreshed. Still, it wasn’t practical to go out and do anything other than necessary errands during the day. I wound up doing a little bit of writing, a little bit of reading, kind of an odd mishmash. However I did accomplish something that pleased me: my passport expires next month and I finally got a digital photo that passed muster, courtesy of the local FedEx office. Completed the online paperwork, now it’s done.

(the After photo)

In the evening we went to Cheesecake Factory which proved indulgently satisfactory. I got a couple of good gifts too, which I’ll mention when I get around to reading them. Overall a decent day but not a birthday for the ages. Next year!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, we took Plushie to the vet Thursday. They gave us some fresh drugs that seem to have stopped him up. He’s much happier and brighter, which is good.

Despite the demands of the Plush One, and being nearly exhausted for a couple of days, the writing went well. 11,000 words on Let No Man Put Asunder. As it seems to be going well, I’m going to continue working with it and finish this draft possibly by May, then ask for beta readers in my writers’ group (with food in return for reading, as is our standard practice). That was all the writing I got done, but I’m pleased with it. I do see a problem developing, which I’ll discuss sometime soon; as I’m seeing it, I imagine I can deal with it.

On the down side, The Local Reporter is dropping back to monthly publication, one or maybe two stories per reporter per month. Financially that’s a hit; I’ll need to start looking for other gigs immediately. Not that we’re in any peril of running out of cash but I take pride in contributing to the family finances. I’m pessimistic this will work — shrinking coverage isn’t usually going to draw more readers — but I choose to hope they know better.

As for Atomic Junkshop, I discuss unresolved plotlines, Stan Lee’s propensity for mythmaking and what comic books were like in the DCU after the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Cover by George Perez. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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March 13, 2026 · 5:21 am

Do you remember Morris, the finicky cat?

Morris was the star of a long-running series of commercials for 9 Lives catfood, emphasizing he was finicky about his food — but he loved 9 Lives! Which I was thinking of this week because Plushie seems to be in a “Morris — hold my beer!” mood.

We have to give both dogs lots of drugs for their various ailments. Trixie will eat hers on soft food; Plushie’s finicky and unpredictable. Depending on the day he may eat gabapentin on either soft food, chicken-broth concentrate or Delectable cat treats. I have no way to know which the chosen substrate will be. This adds several minutes to the process and sometimes waste the drugs. It’s frustrating. Sometimes he’ll turn the gunk down on the plate but eat it off my hand. Currently we’re randomly switching day to day — that seems to help but he still sometimes gets picky. And no, we can’t force it into his mouth the way we do Trixie when we have to. Plush Dudley’s more likely to bite and too stubborn to force easily.

So far we’ve managed to keep him doped enough for his own wellbeing. Hopefully we can keep it up.

(Plushie rolling in snow, from earlier this year)

On the plus side, no dog health disasters this week, so that’s a win. And we took care of one house problem, some foundation work that needed doing. Nothing urgent but it’s good to have it taken care of.

Now, as to writing, this was a good week. I was disorganized after spending last weekend at Ret-Con. Even so I was productive. I completed my March writing goals on Let No Man Put Asunder and on Savage Adventures, covering Doc’s adventures up through The Red Skull. I also rewrote, and I think finished my short story “Mage’s Masquerade.” I realized a while back that some of the key supporting characters weren’t developed enough for readers to tell them apart (a complaint made about a much earlier draft). I think I’ve got it fixed. I also much improved “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” by chopping about 1300 words off the end. I’ll look at both stories the last week of the month and see if I still think they’re done (the first story, maybe, the second almost certainly not).

There’s still no Local Reporter work — hopefully we’ll be back next week. However over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about the comic-books of Earth-One. The cover above suggests they looked exactly like the ones in our world; as I detail at the link, probably not. I also post about Doctor Doom’s short-lived run as a co-star with Ka-Zar in Astonishing Tales.

Doom’s racism in that scene does not work for me.

Things will get crazier next week when I have some IRL tasks to take care of. Still, I budgeted the time for that, so hopefully it’ll still be another good week.

Art by James Bama (t), Carmine Infantino and Gene Colan (b).

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March 6, 2026 · 5:15 pm

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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March 6, 2026 · 5:15 am

Snowdrop: the first year

In January 2025, TYG dragged Snowdrop inside for fear the cold weather would be fatal.

After a couple of nights of wailing and hiding under furniture, he settled in quite nicely. I’m sure having Wisp around helped.

He’s very skittish about being petted. Wisp is always up for petting, he’s much more wary. And hates it when both TYG and I seem to be closing in on him.

However he’s establishing his own turf — he loves those poofs TYG recently bought (they double as bags holding extra sheets and blankets). And he’s never attempted to run out again, despite having had occasional opportunities (we try to minimize those, just in case). Overall he seems happy with his life as a pampered indoor cat: Wisp, easy food, comfortable places to sit, normal temperatures, no mosquitos—the summer before he came indoors, they absolutely mutilated his ears.

Four pets is a lot, but we’re glad the cat distribution network sent you are way, Snow-Snow. And not having to sit with you in the living room with the porch door open on freezing cold — it used to be the only way he’d come in and get warm — is a plus too.

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