Category Archives: Short Stories

February 27, 2026 · 4:30 pm

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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January 30, 2026 · 4:02 pm

On the plus side, we didn’t lose power.

Which was something we worried about during last weekend’s freeze. The predictions were for heavy ice — literally enough weight to snap power lines — along with snow so we charged up our generator and our small chargers, kept the heat up high so it would take longer to freeze inside if the power died.

It didn’t die, like I said. There was some ice but mostly snow.

That big square near the steps is a tarp TYG laid down so the dogs would have an ice-free spot to walk on. It worked, though Plushie insisted on walking on slippery places as much as possible. With four legs he and Trixie did fine; we had to be a little more cautious.

While the storm itself wasn’t a catastrophe, a week of sub-zero temperatures means the ice still hasn’t thawed. It was off the roads by Wednesday so I was able to get to a dental appointment yesterday and physical rehab today, but we still have to exercise caution when going outside, going to the mailbox, etc. And this weekend we’re anticipating another storm — all snow, probably, so we hopefully won’t lose power. But that means no going anywhere this weekend (I got my shopping done today), nor for the first couple of days after. Frustrating.

As we wrap up the first month of 2026, I feel pleased. I didn’t accomplish all the writing goals I wanted — I didn’t have time this week to finish Oh the Places You’ll Go —but I got most of them. I caught up on saving my Local Reporter stories to my computer and saving my blog posts (I see no reason my blog should suddenly vanish but just in case…). I made slightly over my word count for Impossible Takes a Little Longer and Let No Man Put Asunder. I’m 2/3 through with this draft of Savage Adventures. Because of my one colleague at the Local Reporter leaving, I earned slightly more money this month than usual.

On the downside I let the side down (as the phrase goes) on the dog’s daily exercises. Not completely but with Plushie on longer confined by his cage it’s a lot harder to keep him in one place for particular workouts. Yesterday I was using treats to tempt him into an obstacle course; he decided he’d get up on the couch and sleep instead. As the time for caring for them continually increases, I’ve no idea how I’ll work it out once the snow’s gone and Trixie’s back to full morning walks.

I also blew my GOTV effort for the second month in a row, getting half of the 40 cards I’d agreed to write out. I have to get better next month. I did do a good job with the various household/contractor/vet appointment tasks I dealt with.

As for the week itself, in addition to fiction I got in three Local Reporter stories, one on Chapel Hill changing its land-use ordinance, one on a local volunteer rescue service (not up yet) and a companion story about the technical rescue team (they handle water and missing person rescues). At Atomic Junk Shop I pondered whether too many comics are out of continuity, and Earth-Two comics in the post-WW II years.

And yes, the exercises the PT pro recommended did indeed help with my bursitis. Hope for continued improvement next month. And my dentist said my teeth look great, actually improved over last visit. A pleasant surprise, given that I had to delay this appointment two months (no time during the Watching Jekyll and Hyde finishing marathon) — usually that long without getting my teeth and gums cleaned causes (small and fixable) problems. Yay teeth1

Now, another cold weekend. Still, snow is pretty.

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January 23, 2026 · 4:12 pm

2026 introduces its first plot twists

The first twist: I was supposed to be at Mysticon in Roanoke. I was last there right before the covid shutdown; after things opened up again Mysticon didn’t (loss of some of the key conrunners was a big issue). I figured it was gone for good but no, here it is!

Only I’m not because we’re having a winter storm hit and it looks like Durham-to-Roanoke will be fimbulwintered. It’s possible it won’t be that bad but driving on ice is not in my skill set. And the odds look excellent that when I came home, our subdivision would still be unsafe driving even if the main roads had been cleared off. So I canceled.

In a sense, it’s a win. I didn’t have a table to sell books so from a monetary standpoint this would have been a loss. And money has been flowing out too fast the past couple of months. Lots of pet meds, a ramp for Plushie when he was recovering from his CCL tear (turns out we didn’t use it), really steep electric bills … so spending money on what would have been a fun vacation more than a business trip might not be the best thing.

Only it’s not a win because I was really looking forward to going. It’s been a hectic, intense month with lots of writing, doggy care, much of last weekend being solo doggy care (TYG had some alumni activities she attended) so a break would have felt very nice. It’s not like I can come up with some fun activity as an alternative break this weekend because we’ll be snowed in. Sigh.

The other twist is that of my colleagues at The Local Reporter jumped ship for an outlet where he can focus on sports reporting so my editor asked me to take over covering Chapel Hill as well as Carrboro. That’s a good thing — more money — but it will cut into my time for my own projects. This was the first week I blew any of those goals — nothing done on Impossible Takes a Little Longer — though that’s also because I spent one day this week also dealing with errands (get dog drugs and some extra food before the roads are covered in ice and snow) and various household obligations (getting paperwork to our new groomer).

Still, I got stuff done. Some promotional paperwork for McFarland on Watching Jekyll and Hyde, responding to Sam about the new cover design, and several Local Reporter pieces: a Chapel Hill lawsuit settled, prepping for the frozen weather, Carrboro’s plan to close one road on weekends, and other road plans. I worked on Obolos, one of my short stories for the new collaborative anthology, adjusting according to the feedback from my collaborators. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at proposed new costumes for the Legion of Superheroes and discussed the moral implications of Jekyll and Hyde.

I also picked up Oh the Places You’ll Go which I haven’t looked at in months. One of my goals for this year is to get almost-finished stories like this one done and out into the world, whether it’s submitting to others or putting them into an anthology of my own. I got through most of the story but then I hit the ending. It needs fixing; fixing may require killing a couple of scenes that I really like. Due to my newspaper work I didn’t have enough time to decide.

On the dog front, good news. After weeks of Plushie in his cage —

— the vets have told us it’s time to let him out and “let him be a dog.” He’s been having great fun running around and sleeping on the couch (his fave spot) though we’ve carefully fenced him in so he has to use ramp. Trixie had her stitches removed from her biopsy so she’s free to get back to normal too. Yay!

Now comes the weekend and (probably) the ice and snow. Send positive thoughts that our power stays on, or at least doesn’t go off for too long.

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January 16, 2026 · 4:37 pm

No matter the odds, I struggle on to victory!

Which is to say, another hectic but productive week. We’ll talk the hectic first.

We spent the first half of the week dealing with Trixie still caged for her leg surgery. Yesterday we took down the cage. We still want to discourage her from jumping and she still wears the cone of shame for another week, but she can get up and snuggle with me on the couch now, so she’s much happier.

Plush Dudley got the thumbs up from his physical rehab doctor (that’s him in their waiting room above) that he can gradually assume normal activity. We were supposed to get a confirmation from his leg surgeon but they had a schedule conflict so TYG will have to take Dudley in next week (and to the surgeon’s Raleigh office — had it happened on schedule it would have been around the corner at our regular vet’s). Still, we’re comfortable letting him go up and down the outside steps without being carried, which is a load off TYG’s back. (I’m still carrying Trixie but I’ve learned to minimize the strain on my bursitis elbow).

Tuesday we had in an electrician to check out two problem lights in the kitchen. Easy fix (pricey, but preferable to doing it ourselves) but it did take time out of my morning to interact with him.

Thursday I finally had the physical rehab session that got canceled Jan. 2, when I’d scheduled it so I’d be off work. Fortunately it’s quite close, and the session was productive. My therapist mapped out some exercises to do daily, gave me some other advice (don’t rest my shoulder on my pillow, support my elbow better when I’m writing) and sent me home. The exercises feel like they’re working, though obviously one morning isn’t a significant sample.

Less fortunately I’ll have two more sessions this month and two in early February, adding to my already busy schedule. But if it makes the bursitis go away, I’m all for it.

Once again, the writing flourished despite the obstacles. Having gotten around 12,000 words rewritten on Impossible Takes a Little Longer I did the same with Let No Man Put Asunder this week. These are the earlier, more polished chapters so it’s not that astonishing an accomplishment — except unlike last year around this time, I feel there’s significant improvement going on, not just minor tinkering. Let’s hope that continues.

I completed my rewrite of Savage Adventures up through 1940, which is to say I’m 2/3 done. Woot! And I got the latest cover design from Sam, though I haven’t had a chance to think about it yet.

Writing for The Local Reporter was very busy. I had multiple different interviews through the week which isn’t the way I like to roll — it’s much better to have them all squeezed into a small block of time. Still, I got three stories in: a profile of Carrboro’s firefighter of the year; a look at the Carrboro Southern film festival; and an interview with one of the documentarians showing a film there. At Atomic Junk Shop, I posted about one particularly groovy comics ad from 1971.

I also started looking for markets for some of my short fiction only to realize with Bleeding Blue now out I have almost nothing new and unpublished to submit. Perhaps that will change this year.

End result, the week was hectic, exhausting, but productive. And without the dread January sense of trying to super-achieve I get so often — my goals for this month are realistic and manageable, whether or not I achieve them.

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January 2, 2026 · 4:30 pm

I know I wrote stuff in 2025, but it doesn’t feel like it.

Earlier this week I told myself, hey, at least I’ll have finished Jekyll and Hyde by the end of New Year’s Eve … sigh.

The manuscript went off today, thank goodness, but even so … sigh. A bigger sigh because I didn’t get anything else finished this year. And because the worn shoes I usually walk the dogs in — good, supportive sneakers, though ragged — got a disastrous amount of shit on them Wednesday after Plushie took a gooey poo in the dark. So they’re toast. Then today when I was supposed to start PT for my bursitis, the rehab place called to say my therapist was sick, can I reschedule for two weeks. I’d really hoped to start on a day I wouldn’t be putting in a full day’s work.

Getting back to writing …Southern Discomfort didn’t come out. I didn’t finish Savage Adventures. Didn’t get the next draft of Let No Man Put Asunder or Impossible Takes a Little Longer done. I have a couple of short stories that need just a little tinkering … which they didn’t get. I sold some books (thank you, all my readers! I appreciate you!) but I ended up the year with slightly less money in the bank than I started out. Not Christmas presents, just a bunch of extra, and necessary expenses at the end of the year.

Part of the problem is that writing for the Local Reporter kept eating up my time — long meetings, a bunch of interviews in one week. Theoretically that should have meant less work the following week as I got ahead. Somehow it never did. I like the work but I’ll have to manage it better in 2026.

Part of it was that working on Jekyll and Hyde took up a lot of time and, of course, more of it as I moved to the finish. I should have anticipated that — movie books are fun but they always take more time than I expect.

Plus the perennial challenge of increasing pet demands. Dealing with two cats in the morning, albeit ones I love, is somehow more than twice as distracting.

Part of it … I don’t know. I made progress on all my projects but I didn’t finish anything. That’s the perennial risk of writing, particularly when 90 percent of my deadlines are self-imposed: I can write and rewrite until the cows come home and then decide to rewrite some more. If anything, that’s a weakness that gets worse over time. As Lawrence Block said, I can see more ways a story can go than I could when I was younger. That can produce better stories; it can also lead to lots of second guessing and deciding to do it over or telling myself it could be perfect if I just rewrite … like they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

For 2026 I have ambitious goals on my 68 for 68 list. Not ones that should exceed my grasp. Two drafts of both novels. Finish Savage Adventures. Publish Southern Discomfort. Make more money. Submit more stuff (I’d gotten out of the habit this year). Plus, of course, enjoy my life (not a stated goal on my list but still). Despite the frustration with my writing, I had a good year in most other ways. I’d like to have another one in 2026.

To end on an up note, we took the Christmas tree down yesterday. Because it’s in the living room this year (easier than rearranging the two cat litterboxes where we normally put the tree) I realized I could take it out through the French doors (visible behind it) and across the deck and not have to deal with a trail of needles all the way through the house to the front door. It worked! Much less physical strain too. I’ll take it as a good omen.

And frustrating as missing my deadline was, when I got Jekyll and Hyde off this morning, it felt sooooo damn good. I went to celebrate at a local coffee shop … which was closed until tomorrow.

It still felt good to finish.

Happy New Year and best wishes to all y’all.

All rights to images remain with current holders. Comics cover by Jack Kirby with Ditko inking.

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July 18, 2025 · 4:30 pm

“The weekend at the college didn’t turn out like you planned” … and neither did this week

(Title from Steely Dan’s “Reeling in the Years”)

Before we get to the week, let’s get back to Con-Gregate. Winston-Salem is less than 90 minutes away, it was a smooth drive and I found a spot in the parking garage very close to the entrance to the hotel. On the downside, parking cost around $40 for the weekend; it may be a good thing if they switch hotels next year.

(The view from my hotel room)

Because the “author’s alley” tables for selling books were all bought up, I had to settle for a table in the dealer’s room. That was less than ideal as they cost more and have shorter hours. I did, however, want to sell more than I was able to at Ravencon, and that wasn’t going to happen without some sort of table. So … and it paid off, covering the cost of the space and a little more.

I’m always fascinated by how some books click at different cons more than others. There’s no pattern to it I can see, unless it’s something in the way I display them. This time I sold five copies of Atlas Shagged. One of them because one of the audience at my reading Sunday liked Dark Satanic Mills so much. That’s very flattering.

I also sold three copies of Questionable Minds, three of Undead Sexist Cliches, and two each of Atoms for Peace, Ceaseless Way and Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast. Links available at my Behold the Book page. This time I was professional and figured in sales tax ahead of time — otherwise I’d be going “Oh, I’ll eat the tax, don’t worry about it” rather than figuring it out.

I only had three panels: one on fashion in fiction, one on fae in fantasy (I plugged Southern Discomfort mightily) and one on mad science in movies (I brought up some Dr. Jekyll, of course). The rest of the time, I sat at my table. Which was fine except I kept worrying when I left to get food or tea that I’d miss another sale — and yes, I’m small-fry enough that every sale matters. As guesting comes with a free second membership I’m thinking about inviting someone along to help — though they’d still be stuck paying for hotel rooms (I really value having a room to myself and I can’t afford two). Food for thought.

I still managed to chat with several friends and bought $60 of tea from Moments in Tea, a dealer who’s found cons supplement their online business well (I’ve bought from them before so I knew they were worth it). Then a smooth drive home.

Then the week. I took Monday off to recover but rather than rest it was the third type of day off — attending to assorted tasks that had accumulated. A couple of issues with my insurance (resolved), one with pet insurance (still up in the air), various other odds and ends. Necessary, and glad they’re out the way, but not relaxing.

Tuesday I spent mostly working on Local Reporter update articles on Tropical Depression Chantal. One about the impact on local businesses, one about ways to donate to help. Then, Tuesday evening TYG was running a quick errand and wound up with a staple in the right rear tire. The big heavy kind, not the paperwork kind. Fortunately she got home safe on the donut, once AAA changed it for us, but I spent Wednesday afternoon at the tire place getting a replacement. And that after a Wednesday morning spent at a doctor’s office, one of those routine “let’s check that possible problem to make sure it’s not a problem” appointments. That chopped up the working day to the point I got zippo done.

Yesterday? Cleaners came in, which didn’t use to be a big deal. Now I spend a couple of hours upstairs with Snowdrop and Wisp – we lock them in so they don’t panic and rush out with strangers in the house. This is surprisingly brain deadening so I budget it into my time … but as the cleaners came first thing in the morning, that meant most of the day deadened. Probably worse because I think I have a low level of “con crud” — nothing disabling, just a general sense of dragginess. This morning I overslept by about two hours which is way abnormal for me. If that’s the worst it gets, though, I’ll consider myself lucky.

So a little bit of work on Savage Adventures, a little bit on Jekyll and Hyde. Nothing else. And this weekend we take Snowdrop to the vet for his annual physical. Pray for us.

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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July 4, 2025 · 4:32 pm

A good start to July

Politically, this week sucked. The Big Ugly Bill is bad in so many awful ways. Writing, however, went great, partly because I had no appointments to go to, no errands to run. And the holiday — this is one of the ones I take off — was on a Friday so it cut into blogging time rather than other writing.

I rewatched the John Barrymore 1920 adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde, the Spencer Tracy 1941 version and the Fredric March 1932 take — well, technically I sat and watched while I listened to the two commentary tracks. I will have thoughts in a later post. I also watched a 2008 version with Dougray Scott (ditto).

For The Local Reporter, I wrote an article about the Chapel Hill Historical Society’s online resources and one about Carrboro winning an All American Cities award. At Atomic Junk Shop I looked at some stories and images from late 1970, such as this cool Neal Adams cover —

— and the great challenge of research being the things you don’t know you don’t know.

And I wrote some fiction for the first time in a couple of months. I took a look at my short story Oh the Places You’ll Go and discovered it’s in better shape than I thought. I trimmed a lot of the exposition but found the ending still needs more tinkering with. It’s close to what I want, but not quite there.

So yeah, a fun week. I hope y’all are having an excellent holiday — I’m doing stuff I wouldn’t normally do on a Friday such as watching a movie and putting in a solid block of exercise (usually during the work week I have to break it into chuks).

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June 17, 2025 · 5:15 am

The story behind the story: Bleeding Blue

Yesterday, issue 23 of the Stonecoast Review went live, with a Zoom call to promote it. As my short story “Bleeding Blue” is part of the issue, I attended and gave a three-minute reading. Now it’s time to tell you how the story came about.

Almost a decade ago I read History in Three Keys about the Boxer Rebellion and later interpretations of it. Author Peter Cohen mentioned that the Boxers believed they had magic to protect them from bullets; when it didn’t work they had rationalizations why, such as menstruating women canceling out their magic.

Hmm, I thought … what if menstruating women did cancel out magic?

This floated around in the back of my mind for a long while, with lurid images of women simply smearing menstrual blood on things to dispel enchantments. Which is something some writers could have pulled off, perhaps, but not me. When I finally set down to write it, my concept was a little less in-your-face: women having their period neutralize magic by touch. That’s all it took.

The original vague concept of a career cop protagonist (like the one on the cover, drawn by John F. Rosenberger) faded in favor of a POV character who’s not career law enforcement, she’s a draftee. Pre-menopausal woman in a given town go through a draft lottery each month; if you get a low number, you spend the three days of your period (I know periods aren’t always exactly three days but the law says otherwise) working with cops, firefighters, National Guard to help defuse hostile magic.

My original concept of a world where magic was the norm also faded. Instead I imagined magic coming back into force with the new millennium. Then society discovered the neutralizing power of menstruating women. The initial response — let’s make them all isolate themselves when they’re bleeding! — got shot down in a wave of protests and multiple misogynist politicians losing their position. Then came the idea of putting their power to use.

I soon had my protagonist, Janice, a zookeeper who works with raptors. I got the supporting cast: Moxon, the misogynist giving her orders and two female cops currently on “shield duty.” Esquivel is a Latina who normally works cybercrime; Drummond’s on a SWAT team.

Then all that remained was the easy stuff — writing it (peals of derisive laughter, Bruce!). I wanted Janice to handle several different cases but I had to figure out how exactly the police would use her, what might go wrong and what kind of case would provide the climax. That took writing, rewriting, and then rewriting some more. Everything had to be interesting; I also wanted to shed more light on how the draft system works without info-dumping.

Finally I finished it. Then I shopped it around, getting rejection after rejection. Finally I sent it to Stonecoast and got the green light. My editor had a couple of changes she wanted me to make for clarity, such as giving a better sense of the magic rules up front. Happily the changes were simple to make and didn’t turn into info-dumps, so yay!

You can order a copy here though #23 isn’t actually out yet.

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June 6, 2025 · 4:30 pm

Meet the danger noodle

About a week and a half ago I was walking Plushie when I saw this.

TYG confirmed that’s a copperhead, slithering through the dead leaves between our house and the neighbors. Since then we’ve kept the dogs well away from that stretch. But then Sunday TYG returned home and saw the “danger noodle” again, on our front steps.

As venomous reptiles go, copperheads are not omega level threats — even small dogs like ours would probably survive a bite. Still, the thought of Trixie or Plushie getting bitten isn’t acceptable, so we’ve been checking the steps every time we go out. We did call a snake removal service but they don’t work Sunday, don’t do rapid response and so the odds of the snake being in one place until they get here are slim. Plus they’d probably kill him and TYG would rather not.

This was a chaotic week. We had dog annual exams on Wednesday, I had lunch with a friend on Thursday, we went out Thursday night and TYG had to run errands Wednesday evening. Up until Tuesday morning I thought I had my annual physical but I checked at the last minute and that’s next week. Despite which it was productive. I had a final story on Carrboro’s town budget (they passed it) and one on a local disability-justice group. Regrettably that sucked up more time for my own stuff than I wanted, but it’s a paying gig.

At Atomic Junk Shop I blogged Captain America and Black Canary becoming bikers, and another “relevant” story — only the tale of Iron Man vs. the radical leftist Firebrand is good.

Good enough I blogged about it here, too. Art by Don Heck.

For my own work, I concentrated on rewriting the early chapters of Jekyll and Hyde. This went slower than I’d planned: the chapter on Victorian stage plays was one I wrote very early, before I’d figured out the structure I wanted. It needs much more work. I’m partway through — good thing I budgeted plenty of time for rewriting this month.

And there we have it. Enjoy your weekend — I certainly will.

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May 23, 2025 · 4:37 pm

There is once again disorder under heaven …

— but the situation is, if not excellent, fairly decent (“disorder under heaven but the situation is excellent” is an old quote from Mao Zedong).

It didn’t look like it would be when Plushie got up Saturday morning and puked up blood … but it turned out it was just the colored coating of the antibiotics he’s on. Antibiotics stopped (vet’s recommendation), he was back to normal. Indeed, better than normal — since treating his eyes last week, he’s been really lively, even pulling a few of his old misbehaviors. I think his eyes must have been hurting for longer than we realized, poor guy.

Second bit of disorder, an absolutely wretched night of sleep Monday. It did not make me productive Tuesday. Then, Thursday, I had a dental cleaning — everything looks good, but appointments like that always throw me off my game the rest of the day. I would have worked around that (research reading or low-concentration tasks) but we also had the housecleaners arriving that afternoon which meant a couple of hours sitting with the pets in the spare bedroom to keep them out of the way. And keep the cats from running out in alarm at the strangers in the house!!!

As Snowdrop doesn’t go up to the bedroom as often as Wisp does, TYG had to catch him and lock him in. He didn’t struggle but he was not happy. Maybe happier than usual — we put down lots of catnip and feline soothing spray — but we need a better method. I’ve been putting food upstairs to get him used to the bedroom; I don’t think it’s enough but I’m not sure what is. Still, we have another month to work on it.

So that was Thursday largely out of the game. And today I took Trixie in for a quick dewclaw trim because it’s digging into her skin. Normally our groomer trims ’em but we canceled this month’s appointment to avoid any irritation to Plushie’s eyes.

Plus I had more Local Reporter work this week than usual, not one but two council meetings, one on the Carrboro town budget, one on its downtown development plan. That was five hours of meetings, plus the writing.

Everything else was Jekyll and Hyde — watching a couple more movies, doing a lot of reference reading (papers, books), rewriting some sections. Even one of my Atomic Junkshop pieces this week was J&H related, a look at the two “Mr. Hyde was a cokehead” films of the 1980s (when else?). The other was my article about the Black Widow’s 1970 reboot, reposted to fit into my Silver Age Reread there.

That’s John Romita giving ‘tasha the distinctive look that would define her for the rest of the century (even her current look isn’t that far off).

Plus Sunday TYG and I took the first bike ride together since at least the pandemic, possibly longer (it’s one of those habits it’s easy to fall out of, it seems). It was great — she pushed me to go a lot further than I usually ride — though her bike’s saddle is slipping up and down so much, we can’t repeat until REI figures out the problem (it’s an older model).

Oh, and my friend Kat Traylor has proposed a follow-up to our collaborative anthology Ceaseless Way (GetCovers design, based on suggestions by Arden Brooks). Tentative theme: escape. Despite the amount of work it took last time, I have one, maybe two stories that would work for the theme so why not? And it should be easier as we know what we’re doing. We’ve begun inviting new writers in and a couple have said yes. Oh, if you want the first volume, it’s available in paperback and ebook.

So that was my week. Hope yours was good. Now bring on the weekend.

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

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