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 
(Here’s another photo of Wylan the kitten, with one of his favorite toys.)
As for this week’s performance, it was underwhelming. Even with a writer’s work day last Sunday, I just barely made my hours for the week. Maybe it’s that working six days is pushing it, or some other reason but today and yesterday I really slumped. It felt like the days before TYG worked from home, when the dogs would scrunch up with me and erode my personal space to the point my brain fried. As I haven’t had more dog-care than usual this week, I don’t know why that would be. But it was.
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.
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.
Fraser Sherman's Blog 