After a few dry days, the rains have moved back in. It’s a dark, damp morning outside my office window–just the way I like it, and my soul expands with each drop hitting the roof. October was extremely difficult all the way ’round, not least because the rain just wouldn’t come. But that’s over now, thank goodness. And there’s another holiday sale, to add to the Winter Portal Fantasy fun!
From December 8 to December 12, The Marked–a horror suspense novel featuring grief, danger, and living tattoos–is $4.99USD in the US and Canada through Kobo. I can still remember the Indiegogo campaign that gave me the time and funds to write it, which I’m still super grateful for. I do have to get around to its follow-up The Oracle, but it’ll be a while. I still have to get through the rest of Hell’s Acre plus the other serial planned for after Gemma and Avery’s adventures are finished.
Although “finished” is a merely relative term. I know what happens to each of my characters, even the bit players, after a book or series is “done”. Sometimes I choose not to continue with a series (like the Romances of Arquitaine) because I know what looms ahead and prefer not to write some aspects of it. I don’t know if other writers are the same, but I’m sure some must sense what happens after.
Sometimes I don’t continue because “what happens after” is private, meant only for me and the characters in question. And sometimes the vagaries of the publishing industry mean I don’t have the resources to continue–like with the Bannon & Clare books, or the Hell Wars trilogy featuring little Liana Spocarelli from the Danny Valentine series.
In short, there’s a multiplicity of reasons, mortals being what they are.
Yesterday was a marvelously productive day, including getting the narration done for the next Great Chapters episode. The next Reading with Lili will feature Murakami Haruki’s Kafka on the Shore, which I haven’t read in a hot minute and am delighted to be encountering again as if for the first time. So I’m looking forward to that, but only after I get some more serious work on Hell’s Acre and another chunk of revisions knocked off today.
After three years of pandemic, and now a triple pandemic (big fun!), I have to pay for each productive day with a few which…aren’t so kind. Still, I was afraid this entire week would be taken up with nonsense, and am relieved that only half of it was. Small mercies, silver linings, and all that. Though I have been afflicted with some coughing, heaviness in the lungs, and nasal drip since Monday–if being forced to endure that bloody useless endeavor infected me despite careful mask-wearing (because precious few of the people I was required to sit near followed suit) I will be Quite Put Out.
There’s precious little recourse since I’m not independently wealthy enough to make the State treat me like an actual human being. It’s enough to drive one mad.
…I am rather cheerful this morning, aren’t I. At least the coffee is soaking into my poor benighted tissues, so I should head brekkie-ward. Boxnoggin will absolutely despise walkies in cold rain, but the alternative is rather worse and all his protests, besides availing him naught, will wear him out so he behaves in a moderate fashion for the rest of the day. He’ll probably curl up next to the heater in my office afterward, though I hope he doesn’t keep licking the damn thing.
This dog, sheesh. I don’t even know.
Thursday is well underway, and it’s time to gnaw on some toast. I wish us all luck today.
Given how 2022 has behaved so far, I think we’ll need it–in case the year has one last hurrah planned…