One occurrence: I applied a month or so back to do some freelancing for The Local Reporter, a Chapel Hill nonprofit newspaper (Chapel Hill, like Raleigh, neighbors Durham). This week they contacted me, said a change in editor led to my response falling through the cracks, and they were interested. We talked on the phone; sounds like I’d be doing mostly business-related stories, and not a lot of them (the budget, at the moment, won’t stretch to a ton of articles). But it would be income, and the kind of gig I’m familiar with, so I’m down with it. I’ll let you know when something comes out.
Another occurrence: as I mentioned last week, I was blocked on Oh the Places You’ll Go because I hadn’t reconciled to doing more rewriting than my beta-readers had suggested. Monday, I got down to it; by Tuesday evening I’d gone through two rewrites and much improved things, including fixing the problems my beta-readers flagged. However I’ve introduced a couple more: a change in the time-travel rules required more exposition but what I wrote is neither clarifying nor enjoyable, just muddled and confusing. So more work ahead to smooth it out.
I sat down and rewrote the third chapter of Let No Man Put Asunder as I’ll be reading that to the writing group soon as I get on the schedule. I realized the fight scene needed a lot of work — too much banter instead of attacking — and I think I’ve fixed it. We’ll see what the group thinks.
That took up most of the week. Plus I had a post at Atomic Junkshop on Silver Age DC (possibly) knocking off Marvel’s storytelling style. Below, for instance, Gil Kane and John Broome inflict some atypical angst on Green Lantern.
Plus I’m in Con-Tinual’s YouTube channel discussing mythological tropes in fantasy.
#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.
Another week where things did not go as well as planned. But let’s start off with good news: I had my semi-annual checkup this week and all my signs (cholesterol, weight, blood pressure) are better than last time. So yay! This is good.
Does that look like a plain Jane to you? Another post looks at how often superheroes wind up fighting when 
Two of the Con-Tinual panels I’ve been on are up on YouTube, one on 
First off, here’s the cover for Oh the Places You’ll Go. Still needs some added lettering of course but I think the image works for a story about traveling through maps.
First, thank you to whoever checked out Atlas Shagged on 
For once it was TYG and not me who woke up because I’d knocked myself out with my ambien prescription and slept through it. I did take Trixie to the vet the next day which threw me off my game I spent Tuesday mostly doing blogging rather than the fiction I’d had scheduled.
Over at Atomic Junkshop I channeled my past writing on political paranoia in 
#SFWApro.
It’s grown a couple more blooms since then.
While I didn’t get any Atomic Junk Shop posts up this week, my Con-Tinual panel dealing with mythological tropes is 
That got me thinking about speed in my writing more generally.
fantasy and while I think it keeps up the tension, it’s not at the same pace as the more action-oriented 
I think this is a legit approach. Certainly other writers have used it. Steve Englehart, for instance, had the final battle between the Ultraverse heroes the Strangers and their archfoe the Pilgrim wrap up in the Night Man Annual (yes, the same character who showed up on TV in the late 1990s). The Pilgrim had a perfect plan for dealing with the Strangers but it didn’t factor in the Night Man getting involved. As the hero puts it (IIRC) “You had to imrprovise — and jazz isn’t your thing”
Other than that panic, this was a good week for writing, though putting in 30 hours on personal projects is really exhausting by this time on Friday. Taking scheduled breaks would help but I continue to have a bad habit of forging ahead when things are going well, then wondering why I’m losing steam later.
Infinity comes out and I’m not sure I’m a good fit for any of them. More frustratingly, I’d gathered a long list of book blogs to ask for reviews of the book, plus a few to solicit for Undead Sexist Cliches. All but a couple are “too busy, no new reviews!” and the ones that didn’t flatly rule it out are “maybe, possibly, sort of” at best. Come to think of it, I had similar problems with Questionable Minds; I wonder how other authors manage it?
#SFWApro. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with me.
To my surprise, I’m not feeling the usual sense of “where did the time go?” I guess when I’m doing fiction and personal nonfiction full-time, rather than the usual business and finance articles, I feel I’ve filled the unforgiving minutes with 60 seconds worth of distance run (as Kipling puts it). Even if the last week of March hasn’t been so satisfying.
Oh, and I posted at Atomic Junk Shop about DC comics 
Others, as you can see at the link, were painful attempts to talk to kids in their own hip language.
I was quite exhausted the rest of the week. Coupled with the cats spending time in the morning, I wound up not getting any exercise done; my diet was none too healthy too. Work, though, went pretty well
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