Tuesday evening Snowdrop and Wisp showed up for breakfast. That was the last we saw of either cat until Wisp showed up this morning. This didn’t surprise me — we got several days of warm weather, when they’re more likely to roam — but after the second day I admit it worried me a little, and TYG a lot. Even though it’s unlikely something could have killed both cats simultaneously, it’s hard not to conjure up scenarios. And even if they’d found someone wonderful to adopt them instead (given how skittish they were, that’s unlikely too), we’d never know it.
Wisp showed and man, was she hungry. Scarfed a couple of bowls of food, then scarfed more after coming inside, then she napped on the couch. No sign of Snowdrop but if she made it, I think he probably did too. Hopefully he’ll show soon. TYG would be heartbroken if she never saw him again; I’d be disappointed too, though not as much.
(Below, a shot of Wisp cuddling a toy — technically TYG just stuck it under her paws while she slept but it’s still adorable, isn’t it?)
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.
I was on the backup list to read at my Zoom writing group this week but I lucked out and two writers ahead of me dropped out. I finally read the ending of Obolus to the group and to my surprise, they loved it — I’d been feeling much less confident in the twists of the story. Their critique did, however, point out some problems which was good too: I knew something was off but couldn’t quite pin it down. I rewrote the story Wednesday and I think it’s done, except for a final hard-copy edit later this month.
I finished rewriting the first five chapters of Impossible Takes a Little Longer and I’m delighted how much they’ve improved. Of course, this is the part of the book I’ve worked on most; we’ll see how I do once I get into the newer sections. I also got a little over 3,000 words done on Let No Man Put Asunder. That’s definitely becoming harder going as I continue the shift from “protagonists run, fight when they have to” to something different.
I spent a lot of time looking at local bookstores that might consider doing some sort of event for when 19-
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?
I read a couple more Doc Savage novels, The Polar Treasure and Pirate of the Pacific for my Doc Savage reference book (tentatively titled Savage Adventures or something of the sort). I don’t think I’ll be blogging about them, though I might change my mind on the second book.
Not a bad week of work, even if it was unproductive on the PR front. Oh, I also submitted a story and had two more posts on Atomic Junk Shop, one on DC’s Human Target and one on some interesting DC issues of late 1966.
Oh, and today while TYG was at the hair salon I had to walk the pups in a drenching downpour. You can tell how drenching it was by looking at Plushie.
#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
That’s very cool, and Snowdrop even stayed in when I closed the door. However it left me no time for exercise or stretch before the dogs woke up which left me feeling off. After breakfast, I wound up squished between Wisp in the lap and Trixie next to her, both demanding petting and erasing my personal space — and my mind just balked. I got some blogging done, and a little research reading but no writing (blogging, when I’m point, does not count against writing time).
Thursday my focus didn’t come back up. It’s partly my old devil of knowing I’m not going to work a full week so why bother to put in any work at all? I did get some stuff done, but low priority, low-intensity stuff, research for my planned Jekyll and Hyde and Doc Savage reference books. Writing would have been better.
Did I miss a golden opportunity? It would have certainly been more fun than most of my paying gigs and might have boosted my name recognition factor. On the other hand, I don’t know what length of book they wanted: the pay would have been good for 60,000 words, unsatisfying for 100,000. Plus it would come in three scheduled payments per book (one when the first quarter is done, one when the manuscript is done, one when revisions are finished or something like that). I don’t suspect them of chicanery but a new company might run out of funding before I got the cash. Who knows?
I read the second half of Obolus to the writing group — well, I got about halfway through in the time allotted. That’s frustrating as I need feedback on the ending, so I’ll wait and read that part again at the next meeting. Otherwise the reading went great. They found it much improved over the draft I read them a couple of months back. One guy said my lines were so good that like Douglas Adams I distracted him from the flow of the story. I can live with that.
And hey, he’s cute enough to be worth a little sacrifice. Though the strange squirting sound he made when he pooped was gross.
#SFWApro.
That makes me that much happier that some of my unpublished stories will come out in my self-published anthology, The History Arcane (no release date yet). As I’ve mentioned before, submitting to magazines takes time to review the guidelines, make any odd changes required to the manuscript and of course to read the magazine and see if the story’s a good fit. Self-publishing is unlikely to turn a profit but they’ll be out in the world at last, and that will be great.
Let No Man Put Asunder and got part of Six done. It was a wise choice as a couple of things I planned to do in Chapter Six I’d already done earlier in the book. Now, though, I think they’ve had enough of “run, get attacked, fight back” so I need to change things up. I’m not quite sure how yet.
#SFWApro. Covers by Tom Mandrake (top) and Gene Colan, all rights to images remain with current holders.
#SFWApro. cover by Samantha Collins, rights are mine.
Seriously. I put in a good week’s work and by the end of every day I feel wiped. Not quite as bad as Sgt. Rock, but still exhausted. But it is, as they say, a good tired. I even got in slightly more hours than I’d planned to, which will make up for whenever my schedule goes south later this month.
The romance anthology Starlit Bridges is now out, with my Wodehouse Murder Case included. You can buy it in 
