When TYG and I got back from our madcap Mensa weekend we picked up the dogs from doggy boarding, then I made chili (quick, easy, tasty — perfect for the end of a long day driving). I’d already planned to take Monday off so that if the dogs, Wisp or Snowdrop wanted some extra attention after our absence I’d have no conflicting obligations. That proved fortunate because Sunday night, Plushie came down with the every-two-hours squirtling diarrhea.
As TYG has a less forgiving boss than I do, I took point on walking him and spent most of Monday in a daze. I tried taking naps during the day but invariably Wisp would start demanding to come in or Plushie would suddenly discover it was time for a new squirtle. He stabilized Monday night thank goodness, then Tuesday TYG took him to the vet. They found nothing; we brought him in for an ultrasound Thursday but haven ‘t heard the results. While we’d love to know why he’s had this problem more than once this year, we’re relieved they didn’t find cancerous lumps in his stomach or anything like that. If diarrheal 1AM walkies are the trade-off for keeping him around, so be it. But for the moment he’s back to normal potty hours and solid poops.
Oh, here’s a look at him after the ultrasound. He’s so sensitive to pain (“A sensitive boy” as they put it at the vet’s), they drugged him to be comfortably numb. He remained stoned the rest of the evening.
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
First up, I finished the revised Mage’s Masquerade and it looks good. I started looking for markets without any success so far though I did stumble across markets for Bleeding Blue and Fiddler’s Black. Both are now out.
I also put in work on The Cheap Assassin and have at least a working idea of the story/character arc (it’s a character-centric story). At this point, however, it’s heavy on talk rather than action. I need to find a way to have something happen besides exposition. I’ve had that problem before; it’s fixable.
I put in a couple of thousand words on Let No Man Put Asunder which gives me the 10,000 I wanted for this month. I may do more next week but there are other projects I can concentrate on. I also spent some time planning the next draft of Impossible Takes a Little Longer. I’ve realized KC needs to be a lot more intense from the first chapter; I can see how to do it.
I also worked getting the manuscripts for 19-Infinity and Oh the Places You’ll Go ready for self-publishing. That included sending the latter story out for beta-reading. I have a cover image for it as well; hopefully I can have it out and for sale by the end of April.
And over at Atomic Junk Shop I look at the impact of Steve Ditko leaving Marvel plus a couple of stories I just like. Over at Con-Tinual’s YouTube channel, I’m one of the panelist discussing mythological tropes.
#SFWApro. Have a great weekend everyone. Cover by Jack Kirby, all rights remain with current holder.
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.
I’ve no idea why but I’m getting a lot more fiction done, and finding answers to short stories I thought were hopeless dead-ends such as Paying the Ferryman (I think I’m going back to my old title, Obolus) and Mage’s Masquerade. And writing on Let No Man Put Asunder has gone surprisingly smoothly for a first draft. Is it that TYG is so much less stressed the past few months? That I’m not currently putting any time on the boring bills-paying gigs? Or is it that after working on Jews in Popular Science Fiction, 
#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holder.
That’s pretty much it, but it’s a satisfactory work week. Two months into 2023 and it seems I still have game.
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 
Fraser Sherman's Blog 