Month: October 2013

Ow.

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So I was spending the afternoon painting the front of the house, trying to get the last bit in before the weather turns to cold for it (below 50°), and I’ve been using my children’s old play set as a scaffolding. Probably not the brightest idea I’ve ever had, but certainly not the dumbest.

I know this for a fact.

The dumbest idea, of late, is stepping out on the side beam of the “scaffolding” to reach that last little bit of siding – a space about two feet long by one foot tall. The beam was held together by a pair of drywall screws through the thinnest part of the wood, not the big old lag bolts that tied the rest of this structure together.

Did you catch the past tense there? Oh yeah. Those screws aren’t doing a bit of good now. Mercifully, the pine bush broke most of my fall, so I didn’t completely bash my skull in on one of the concrete drainpipe receptacles we’ve got at every the corner of the house. No, not completely. Just a little bit. Torqued my shoulder pretty good, too. And tore some skin off my, ankle, and back.

What fun.

So here I am, cleaned up and polysporined half to death, sick and tired of the ice packs on the back of my noggin, and assuring the family that I don’t need to go to the hospital, ’cause there just ain’t no cure for stupid. At any rate, I hope to get some writing done. But if it stops making sense, it might be a signal that I should go to urgent care. Not my idea of a good way to spend the evening.

At any rate, that’s my day so far.

Recovering From Some Changes…

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So after a major life change in my family, I’m back to writing again. Two pretty large events totally threw me off pace this past September. Even mentioning them in the context of writing feels a little out of place, and I don’t want you to think that I don’t regard these events as highly significant. The first was the passing of my mother-in-law. It was expected and yet unexpected. She’d been suffering from a debilitating disease, and yet when the time came, it took us all by surprise.

Naturally, I didn’t do any real writing during this time. Just a couple hundred words or so when things settled in the evenings, and there wasn’t anything better to do.

The second event was a new job, which I am just now starting to settle into. I’ve been promoted to an assistant manager of a new house. Actually, it’s a new house with new guys and new staff: Yikes! My company rarely does this, but this was a special opportunity. Nevertheless, it’s been marvelously chaotic as we learn to adapt to new responsibilities and new routines. Finally, this week, my work schedule seems to have settled down to a dull roar, and we’ve grown more comfortable with the new guys to not be quite so stressed out as before.

Still, this morning met the third day when I have successfully reached my 2k word goal. I’ve had to let go of two projects–Nicholas and the next Jonathan Munro Adventure, both of which were falling behind as it is. Nicholas, being a Christmas story, is better released next October. And since the second Jon Munro book, The Elixir of Life, hasn’t come out yet (November!), it’s okay to hold on to it until we reach the new year. This does put me back a bit on those projects, however.

On a positive note, however, this does mean I should be able to finish the remaining four books in plenty of time, even going over my typical word count if need be. Jefferson’s Road: God and Country, Descent, A Glass Half-Empty, and The Blood-Eater Coven are all past 40k words and still climbing. I have hope that, maintaining the 2k word goal, I’ll have these books done, perhaps in time for Christmas.