Category Archives: Story Problems

May 27, 2026 · 5:15 am

Southern Discomfort: better with beta readers

I think Southern Discomfort is a terrific book, though I freely concede that I’m biased. I do not, however, take all the credit for it. My beta readers on the book have been invaluable. These include the Durham Science Fiction/Fantasy Writing Group, writer & friend Michele Berger, writer & friend Cindy Holbrook and TYG offered some insights at one point in the process. Maggie Prestwood of the group gave me an extra final beta editing that helped a lot.

I’m good at editing myself and spotting problems but I’m not infallible; I doubt anyone is. That’s particularly true with a work of around 90,000 words. In a short story there’s a limit to how much I can mess up; with a novel there’s more scenes so more opportunity to make mistakes. Get a name wrong. Forget that someone wears glasses or that they have a distinctive way of phrasing everything.

Beta reading isn’t just about catching mistakes, however. It’s about making a story better. Many drafts back, 2nd Lt. and former Army nurse Maria Esposito starts out with no intention of sticking around Pharisee, the strange Southern town in which she’s been captured. After a kelpie attacks and almost kills someone, she’s horrified enough to stay and fight the mystery threat.

The consensus from the writing group: not convincing. Maria simply doesn’t have enough reason to stand and fight for people she doesn’t know, given the risks (death or a 20-year federal sentence) facing her. They were right; I rewrote so Maria spends more than half the book trying to run from Pharisee. When she does change her mind, the stakes are higher and its both more dramatic and more believable. This makes her less likable — she’s looking out for number one for most of the novel — but it works better.

I think it was Michele who suggested another improvement. During the segregation era, Olwen and Aubric McAlister didn’t allow violence against the county’s black population, though they did accept Jim Crow as the law of the land (an acceptance some of the black community were not pleased with). Blacks traveling through Georgia could stop in Pharisee and know they wouldn’t be assaulted. Michele pointed out this would probably be mentioned in the Green Book, the celebrated guide for black travelers on where it was safe, or wasn’t, to stop.

I incorporated this idea into the book. The Green Cafe run by one of the wealthier black families — and named to tie in with Green Book — is a storied spot; black entertainers traveling through the South knew they could stop overnight in Pharisee without trouble so a lot of them booked shows there. It’s not essential to the plot but it adds to the world-building.

Another of my betas — I don’t remember which — had issues with a key reveal in the plot, involving a favor Olwen McAlister did for Sheriff Slattery and his family. She thought it put Olwen in a bad light. After thinking about it, I realized that while Olwen does several morally compromised things, this one didn’t fit. I reworked it.

I’ll have more to say about beta reading next week. Southern Discomfort cover by Samantha Collins, all rights to cover images remains with current holders.

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May 8, 2026 · 4:17 pm

A Charleston fountain plus a week in review

I still haven’t uploaded all the Charleston vacation photos so today you get to see the Pineapple Fountain we visited in a waterfront park. When it was built, being able to import and serve pineapples was a mark of wealth and Charleston was both a hub of trade and a wealthy city.

The fountain, with my sister wading in it. Birds did that too.

After a frustrating April, this week went well, despite taking time off Monday to visit Costco. With god knows what about to happen to our economy due to the Toddler’s stupid Iran war, TYG and I figured picking up some bulk supplies now might be wise.

I wrote 6,000 words on the current draft of Let No Man Put Asunder, despite the fact I’m having to change a lot more of the book. As I realized last month, Mandy’s character arc isn’t strong enough. I’ve added a couple of scenes this section that will help with that; hopefully more will come to mind as I move forward. However I also realized I cut out some scenes where she realizes whatever magical transformation she’s undergone is compelling her to quit smoking, something she’s not happy about. It simply looks like halfway through the book she stopped lighting up. I’ll have to go back and fix that.

I rewrote the short story Honey on the Grave and it looks good. I’m reading for the writing group next week; we’ll see what they make of it. If it’s got problems I can’t see, they’ll spot them. I also reread Die and Let Live and started restructuring it so that it’s less of a talk and exposition fest. I haven’t actually written the changes — there’s places where I’ve no idea what to replace the exposition with — but diagnosing what needs to change is the first step. I also reread my short story Inherit the Howling Night (title very much a placeholder) and I want to work on that one next. It has substantial problems — no good ending, no idea of the lead character’s arc, protagonist is a writer and “struggling writer” is a character type that rarely works for me — however I’m starting to see fixes (character may become an actor instead).

I got some work done on The Savage Years and my cover is almost ready to go for Southern Discomfort. It’s just technical stuff like formatting to make it work on the Amazon paperback. I should have a release date soon and hopefully will have some copies in hand at ConGregate this summer. Details soon.

I also got my first article in at The Local Reporter in the new monthly format, a longish one on why Chapel Hill/Carrboro is looking at school closures.

From some time back, here are Con-Tinuals panel with me discussing humor comic books, another where I talk Swamp Thing and one about Britain in 1940.

May the rest of the month flow as smoothly. Don’t bet money on it though. I certainly don’t.

Cover by Bernie Wrightson, all rights to image remain with current owners.

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April 8, 2026 · 5:15 am

A character arc has to bend towards something, right?

I’m now more than 30,000 words into the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder. I think I’ve encountered the first problem I’m having to think hard about.

As I’ve written several times over the years, the start of a story determines where it ends. Bleeding Blue, which came out last year, starts with Janet beginning her three days service as a police shield; it ends when her service ends and she returns to normal life. Questionable Minds starts with Simon Taggart dealing with a traumatic flashback; it ends with him making peace with at least some of his trauma.

Let No Man Put Asunder starts with Paul and Mandy both unhappy. Paul’s academic career has crashed and he’s now working as a busboy at a greasy spoon and spending whatever he can spare to buy time with sex workers. Mandy’s family are finally out of the house, she’s ready to start living life for herself … and yet she’s suffering a failure to launch. Then they meet, find they’re somehow telepathically linked, people start trying to kidnap them … but I think the ending sets up that the resolution should be about moving into a better place in life, or failing to.

Paul’s arc is shaping up nicely; from his perspective this is a “new adult” book where he grows up and starts to live his life. Mandy’s is trickier. She’s older, a lot more mature, and the life she has at the start isn’t bad; Paul needs a complete reboot, Mandy just needs some upgrading.

The obvious HEA would be some romance in her life, which she’s certainly open to. However that feels way too trite for a female lead and I don’t have anyone in mind (Paul is more in the little brother category). I’m not sure yet what the alternative is.

Because of that, the current section of the book feels a little unbalanced. Paul’s getting to grow and change, Mandy doesn’t have as much to do emotionally. Part of what I did last week was to go back and rewrite the scene before they storm the vampire fortress that materialized on the motel where they were staying (things are getting weird. They’ll get weirder). Dive into Mandy’s feelings, her fear they’re on a suicide mission, the reasons she does it anyway, the realization that frustrating as her life is, she’d like to hang on to it.

I think it helped with the balance between them a lot. That still doesn’t show me where her character arc is heading but it’s a start.

Cover by Samantha Collins, all rights to image are mine.

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April 1, 2026 · 5:12 am

When will this story finally start?

About 10 months ago, an agent doing a writing workshop told me the opening of Let No Man Put Asunder didn’t give any idea of the genre and I should fix that. As I said at the link, I don’t see that as a problem for stuff published through my Behold the Book imprint. Readers are going to see a cover image and read the back-cover copy so they won’t look at the first page and assume it’s a mainstream story about a kid who dropped out of college and now works in a greasy spoon.

The same for Southern Discomfort. It’s not got any magic on the first couple of pages, and no definite magic even through the first chapter. However readers will know when they pick it up or see the Amazon listing that it’s specfic, rather than a historical novel about a female fugitive.

Showing the magic up front won’t work in either case. The protagonists are ordinary people about to be sucked into the supernatural; until that point they have no reason to know magic exists (as Maria in Southern Discomfort protests very loudly at several points). In some stories you can have weird shit happening from the get-go even if the protagonist doesn’t know the reason; these two books are not that kind of story. Originally I started Southern Discomfort with the murder of Aubric McAlister, cluing the reader in to the basic premise of the book. Feedback convinced me that was too slow a start, without sufficient tension; Maria’s story’s got tension in spades.

It’s perfectly legit to start a fantasy novel with mundane scenes, provided their interesting. Much as I like the magical goings on in Pharisee County, I think Maria’s character arc is a stronger hook. The magic is essential to the story and becomes more so as things get crazier. Still, it’s more about ordinary people stuck in the middle of a magic war than the magic war itself.

Which brings me to the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. After completing my viewing for Watching Jekyll and Hyde, I’ve come to appreciate even more how good this film is (though the abuse subplot is horrifying. Consider that your trigger warning).

In a 90-minute film, it takes us half an hour before Edward Hyde comes on stage. Several movies do that, introducing Jekyll, his fiancee/dream girl/wife and the nature of his research before getting to the transformation. A lot of them are boring with uninteresting, undramatic pre-Hyde scenes. They’re a long establishing shot that sets things up but accomplishes nothing else.

Not in this one, thanks to Rouben Mamoulian’s direction and Fredric March’s performance. We open with a Jekyll’s eye-view of his life — his elegant home, his devoted butler — and that unconventional viewpoint makes it way more interesting than it would be otherwise. Then we watch March’s Jekyll lecture to an astounded audience about his vision of splitting off our evil side so that we can enjoy lives of pure goodness. As I explain in my book there are huge flaws in this idea (what are the pure evil sides going to be doing?) but Mamoulian makes it visually fascinating. Then we cut to Jekyll’s charity clinic where his medical genius enables a girl on crutches to cast them aside and walk — a classic miracle as the ultimate proof of his goodness.

We shift to the Carew dinner party where Jekyll’s future father-in-law dresses him down for being late, then he and Muriel (Rose Hobard) snatch a quiet scene alone. March was best known at that point as a romantic lead; alternating between dreams of passion and whimsy he keeps the scene arresting (Hobard’s not a bad actor but her role doesn’t give her much to work with). The result? It’s a good movie even before Hyde enters.

I don’t know if I can create anything that intense in my opening. I’m certainly shooting for it.

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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 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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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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January 17, 2025 · 4:15 pm

Thoughts on Facebook, then my work week

As I mentioned yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg has not only given up fact-checking on FB, he’s loosening the rules on content so that insulting women, gays, trans people will be easier. As someone said (I don’t have the link) it’s not just about kowtowing to FOTUS (Felon of the United States) it’s that right-wingers having their speech unrestricted gets them more engaged, which keeps them on FB rather than popping off to X or Gab.

I’m not leaving, at least not yet. There’s lots of people I stay in touch with on Facebook. For “Oh, my wife said a funny thing” or similar trivia, FB works better than an email newsletter or a txt, and I contact more people. The format works better for me than Bluesky though I’m there too. As with X, the whole threads thing feels very awkward if I have a long post to make. And screw it, Facebook is (practically, though not legally) part of my public space. I’m not letting people push me out if I can help.

As someone said years ago when FB started, we need a social medium like Facebook … just not Facebook. However that’s what we’ve got. So unless Zuckerberg works to make it as toxic as X, I’ll stick. But no clicking on ads of any sort.

Now, my work week. Wait, first here’s a photo of my master bedroom, taken at an odd angle.

This was a good week but not as good as last week. I wound up doing three Local Reporter stories which took up more time than I’d wanted. However one of them’s held over until next week so that means less work (hopefully—it’s a council meeting so it might run long). One of the two that ran this week was about Carrboro’s plans to turn East Weaver into a pedestrian mall. The other covered a discussion of how Carrboro can keep up its support for diversity and equity in the face of national trends against it.

We also had our housekeeping people in Thursday. They do good work (and get tipped accordingly) but having to shift the dogs and Wisp around so they’re out of the way and can’t run out through an open door takes some work. And invariably ends up with me sitting in a room with three pets for half an hour. The cleaners came earlier than usual, which is good, but then again it was disruptive enough I was off my balance the rest of the day.

(Our dogs in the master bedroom when they’re not freaking out about strangers in the house).

Wisely I spent Thursday on mundane matters that didn’t require much creativity or thought. That helped balance things out.

The rest of the week I did some work on Savage Adventures, though various distractions (most notably an overflowing toilet) hindered me from focusing. I watched one movie for Jekyll and Hyde and did some rewriting. However I also did some fiction, returning to both Let No Man Put Asunder and Impossible Takes a Little Longer. I made my word quota for January on each book — it’s rewriting the early chapters which is relatively easy — though I may put more time in, depending how the next two weeks shake out.Impossible was the more interesting and challenging rewrite: I’m trying setting it back in the 1980s. This requires changing a lot of the pop culture references, though it also simplifies some of the alt.history.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at ABC’s Saturday morning lineup from 1969, a bad Wonder Woman story pitting her against three eeeevil lesbians —

— and Roy Thomas on his efforts to shake up Marvel’s Captain Marvel.

Not a stellar week but satisfactory. Art by Mike Sekowsky, all rights to image remain with current holder.

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November 29, 2024 · 4:00 pm

Feelin’ groovy

This wasn’t a productive week but it was a good week.

Mostly the lack of productivity came from taking Thursday off. I also fell into the trap of having to spread my Local Reporter work over parts of three days. I do my best to concentrate it in one day because that forces me to write a little faster. Once it gets beyond that, the time it takes to write the articles expands. Unfortunately I got an interview late Tuesday and so things stretched over to Wednesday morning. Still the story, about a Carrboro Thanksgiving morning 8k race, came out quite well. My other story, about B3 Coffee, was good but not as inherently interesting.

The Ceaseless Way is now out in paperback, at the initial price of $9.99 (cheaper in ebook) — it’ll go up come the new year. I did some last bits of stuff on the anthology this week and I’ll have another interview post next week, but otherwise, that’s another task checked off.

I did get some work done on Southern Discomfort in the middle of all that but reached one point a little over halfway and I could not figure out how to make it work. It’s nothing insoluble, just that the time left from reporting didn’t leave me with enough clarity to solve it. Definitely done next month, though my cover remains elusive.

And then came Wednesday night. I tend to be obsessively organized; Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s are the few times I turn off and completely go with the flow. That felt great. So did the excellent vegan buffet at Cafe Parizade, where we both stuffed ourselves.

The baklava was exceptionally tasty.

Then there’s Plushie.

Sunday, he puked up in the early morning and TYG thought it might have included blood. She wasn’t sure but we took him to the vet to make certain. Tests and X-rays found nothing wrong but we came back with a bunch of extra meds and some super-bland food.

No puking since. Not only that, he’s perkier and obviously happier and more comfortable than he’s been in a while. That’s great, but also upsetting: he was probably having a low level of tummy discomfort for weeks before he vomited without us realizing there was a problem. Fortunately we have his annual wellness checkup in a week. We’ll talk to the vet and see whether we should keep him on bland food or what.

Still, he is much perkier and that’s a joy to see.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and the good feeling continues (or begins) as we move into holiday season.

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September 6, 2024 · 4:28 pm

My baby brother came to visit

My brother Craig is performing in a production of Sweeney Todd down in Florida so as I mentioned a week ago, he came for a visit. It’s a hike by plane, but easier than when he’s on his home turf in Los Angeles. Here were are enjoying some tea at a University of North Carolina coffee shop.

Yes, he’s technically not a baby, being only a few years younger than me.

We had a great time chatting about Doctor Who, comics, family, playing with the dogs, walking and watching movies. And eating. And hanging with TYG. Wisp wasn’t thrilled to have a STRANGER in the house but she was more chill than I’d have expected.

In other cheery news, Plushie’s eye problems, which I also wrote about last Friday, turned out to be bad (eye ulcer) but thanks to TYG spotting there’s something wrong, they were treatable. He’s fine now. I’m always impressed how fast she can spot things like that.

The first week of September was a good one for writing. I’m up over 100 pages in my final proofing of Southern Discomfort so I feel I’ve accomplished something. It’s still mostly minor changes though my friend Maggie got me to do a major rewrite of one scene. So far no problems or flaws have been unfixable.

I rewrote the first chapter and a half of Jekyll and Hyde and read part of it to the writing group. The feedback was favorable, with some constructive criticism, though nothing that would be worth detailing here. I also watched a streaming performance of Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical (my brother played Sir Danvers Carew) and a 1950s adaptation for the TV series Climax.

My ideas for a Local Reporter story mostly didn’t pan out, which led to me spending lots of time trying to find something that would. It would have been more cost-effective to skip the week, but I hate doing that. And I did find and write a decent story, about transit and downtown development plans soliciting public feedback.

At Atomic Junk Shop I looked at various Batman stories from early 1969, including his last battle with Catwoman for five years (though she appeared elsewhere, like the Wonder Woman cover below).

I went to the doctor this week, a recheck of my blood iron as it was low last time. Almost certainly because I’d just given blood but nobody knew that. Happily my blood iron is good again, my cholesterol is decent (good cholesterol could be higher) and blood pressure is normal. I also did better on exercising and stretching this week than I’ve done in a while.

The four-day week, with blogging and email on Friday, continues to work well. However it is surprisingly exhausting to finish the blogging for here and Atomic Junk Shop in one day. Perhaps because it’s the equivalent of squeezing out multiple short articles, most unrelated to each other? One reason for the four-day approach was that focusing on one thing a day, when I can work it, makes me more productive. Still, overall the change has been a win.

#SFWApro. Cover by Dick Giordano. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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