(Still not) Merry Everything

2024. Finishing the year strong. What can I say?

The photo is (was) our car, a 2006 Toyota Highlander. My husband pulled out of the parking lot at his job last week and someone left-turned right into his driver's side doors. Which now no longer work.

Shockingly, he's fine. Completely, other than a little shaken up. Cars made of plastic are still apparently safe.

But it's totaled, even if the insurance companies (the other guy stayed, admitted fault, etc., but it's Christmas and everything is moving slowly) haven't agreed yet. So it's sitting, as is, in our driveway, and on Saturday, we went out car shopping with my sister-in-law - in her car - to buy a new one. 

This time it's a 2010 Prius (we likey the hybrids, not ready for EV yet) with a good number of miels but in excellent condition. We never put more than 5,000 miles on our cars per year as it only gets driven back and forth to my husband's job, around town, and on occasional wine runs to NJ. It'll do.

In other news, I went to the doctor and got some tough love. I'll talk about that next week, because at least I'll have things to talk about in the quiet portion of the year.

Last Friday was my part-titme job's holiday party (fun, lots of food, crossing-guard Santa in a red suit and high-vis vest), then the mayor's birthday party (bar, buffet, music, more fun). Saturday was car shopping; Sunday was writing and rest. Monday-Tuesday, off for huband, morning work for me. 

And today, we'll be at sister-in-law's for dinner. Low key, quiet, good food. Then home, couch, something good on TV. I'm off the rest of the week, which is my gift to myself.

I hope you have a merry whatever-you-celebrate, and if you celebrate nothing (which is fine), I hope everyone leaves you in peace to do just that.

See you next year!

Busy busy

If you're a long time reader, you  know that I like to keep busy. But it's more than liking to keep busy. It's that if I'm not busy, not checking things off and endless to-do list, I feel like I'm slacking. 

Someone once told me - and it wasn't meant as a compliment - that I worship at the altar of productivity. They probably weren't wrong. I do judge myself by how much I accomplish. The last thing I do before bed each night is to make a list for the following day. If I manage to go to bed without making my list, it will keep me up until I go downstairs and do it. I know that's not particularly healthy, but it works for me. 

When I added writing professionally to the mix of things I needed to accomplish every day, the list got longer. Because I break tasks up into small pieces, both for the rush of checking off multiple things, and because it's more realistic than thinking I'm going to get an entire book edited and formatted in one day. Much more realistic to put "edit five chapters" on the list, and if I do more, I'm ahead. 

With all this, there are still times when I think I'm not doing enough. If I'm sitting on the couch at night with my husband, watching a movie, I'm also reading on my Kindle or doing a bit of hand sewing, or scheduling social media posts. It's hard to switch off. 

And yet the voice is still there, saying, "You haven't gotten all that much done today. You should keep going."

The solution to that - and I offer it to you if it's at all useful - is to change the story I'm telling myself. We all know the power of stories. If you say you're unproductive and disorganized, there's a good likelihood that you will be unproductive and disorganized. If you tell yourself that you're productive, you will be. We believe the stories we hear, even if we're telling them to ourselves. 

Now, go forth and accomplish something. That's what I'm going to do.

Moving along

Things are moving along this week. I'm not quite keeping up with them. 

My husband started a new job on Monday after being laid off back in February. Severance package was good so no worries there but it's good to get back to normal. 

Tomatoes are still threatening to take over the house. I'm watching a neighbor's cat in the afternoon so I took a big batch to her house to process in her (larger, air-conditioned) kitchen. 

Work is going well on the next book, and I just finalized a set of new covers for the Tudor books with the designer. A proper reveal is coming soon. 

Speaking of Tudors, I found this lithograph of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn recently on eBay. I'd first seen it years ago and lost the auction at the very end, but this had a solid 'buy it now' price and so I did. Once I find an appropriate frame, it'll go up in the bedroom with the rest of the family. 

I'll check the basement. There's a very good chance the perfect frame already exists and is just covered in dust.

Technical difficulties

Argh! Amazon!

I'm not sure if you know this, but part of my business model is advertising my books on Amazon. It works pretty well, as a rule - who knows what we like better than Amazon? 

About 10 days ago, however, that changed. Amazon had what they're calling a "glitch" with their US ads. They claim it's been fixed and will just take some time to trickle down, but I'm skeptical. Forgive me.

Normally 75-80% of my sales are in the US; currently it's 40%. And that's not because the other countries have stepped up. 

Right before things crashed, I started a new automatically-targeted ad for my Ava and Claire books. When it spent my full ad budget for 3 days running without a single sale, I checked the targeting (the search terms Amazon applies to the book) and WTF??

Dog training. Furniture refinishing. Psychological thrillers. True crime. 

Umm, no. That doesn't come close to my 1930s sister stories about hard times and resilient women. 

Anyway, this is a long way round to say if you've ever been interested in buying one of my books, now would be an excellent time because my income is going to be around my ankles this month otherwise. 

https://books2read.com/karenheenan

Kindle Unlimited counts. Library borrows count -- did you know you could request my paperbacks from your library? Actually, at this point, thinking good thoughts about the algorithm also counts. Thank you from the bottom of my stressed writer's heart.

The garden is really coming along. I made ratatouille this morning in the Instant Pot and the only ingredient I had to buy was onion. It feels good to have all that available. 

Also, in hot weather, there's nothing like coming with an instant pot instead of spending a few hours over the stove. When I first got the pot, I bought an extra liner, which makes labor intensive dishes like this a lot easier - I don't have to dump out the first stage of vegetables, I can just switch in another liner. And I have a silicone lid, so I can just put the whole pot into the fridge when I'm done. 

I like my ratatouille both hot and cold, so it doesn't matter to me.

What's your favorite straight-from-the garden dish?

Routine

Do you have one? Do you need one? Or do you drop into your day like the balls in a pinball machine, scattering everywhere? 

I'm a little of each. I have certain routines I like to follow - tasks on my calendar that get done each week, because otherwise I'd forget - and if I don't get my Monday morning at the coffee shop, I do get a little grumpy. The rest of the time, there's a list, and so long as the bulk of items on that list get done, I don't care in what order. 

A lot of writers like to sit down at their desk at a set time every day, staying there for a certain period or a certain number of words. That doesn't work for me. I've spent so much of my life writing in small corners of my life - at work, on the train, waiting in line - that a large stretch of time usually pushes me to do something that takes a large stretch of time to accomplish. I can do words in a few minutes, and come back to them later. It may not be the most efficient, but that's how I've trained myself to work, and this dog is too old to learn new tricks when the old ones serve perfectly well. 

This heat wave we've been having has definitely thrown off my routine. I haven't seen the coffee shop in 2 weeks, other than standard Saturday breakfast club after the farmers market. My daily 2-mile walks, which absolutely helped my writing brain, have also been curtailed. The only task I'm really keeping up on is the garden, because if I don't, it will die and we will have no veggies. 

So what's your method? Are you a list maker? A list checker? Or do you fall free form into your day and still get all the things done?? Or do you fall free form into your day and still get all the things done?

Help

Help.

There's a word. One I hate using. Always have. 

But.

Recently I had the opportunity to apply for a mastermind program for indie writers. I knew it would be good for me. I knew someone who was in the program just ending, who spoke highly of it. 

But. 

It's asking for help, right? Even paying for the membership is asking for help.

I don't do that well. Just ask my husband the stupid situations I get myself into because I don't like asking for help. Move furniture alone? Sure. So what if I can't stand up straight for 2 days? Transport 3 yards of mulch by myself? Absolutely - unless you insist on helping, and then I'll probably tell you that you're doing it wrong.

But it nagged me. I knew that this program - 12 writers at the same level, 12 months of intensive coaching, the kind of inspiration you only get from people who want the same thing as you, as badly as you - would work for me. 

Fine. I applied. It was a more thorough application than any job I've ever had. 

And then I got accepted. 

For a moment, I thought about making an excuse - too busy, not enough money. Something. 

Then I said, "Yes, thank you," and sent my payment. Because I do want to learn how to improve as an indie author, and I'm far more likely to do the work if I've paid for it.

But asking for help...it still hurts.

The right life

I was listening to a podcast the other day. An older female writer being interviewed, and she answered a question about why so many creative people give up on their dreams just before things get big. She said part of it is fear, because by that point we don't believe that good things will happen, but the other is that they reached a certain age and realized that they don't have a house or a 401k and they have no idea what their future is going to look like. And that's terrifying in a whole different way. 

That really resonated, and perhaps it's why I'm so gung-ho now. I did 30 years at a job - while writing for myself in my free time - and I had a house. I have the 401k. When we moved from Philadelphia to the burbs six years ago, we sold our West Philly houses and bought the new one for cash. It's much smaller than what we had before, but that's fine. Neither of us are extravagant. We don't need big houses, expensive cars, or nice clothes to wear for non-existent office jobs. 

So this later-in-life writing career suits me to a T. I may not have as many years as someone who starts in their twenties, but I've gotten the hard work and the bulk of the worry out of the way. We won't be homeless or hungry or wonder what the future will bring, other than the standard existential dread that afflicts us all from time to time. And I've lived a lot and learned a lot and written a lot in those intervening years. 

All in all, despite it having felt weird to be a debut author in my mid-50s, it's absolutely the right life for me now.

Who is that?

Have you ever stumbled across an old photo and not recognized yourself? Whether it's such an old picture or simply because it doesn't match the picture you have in your head?

That happened to me this week. I was rummaging around on my computer, trying to find a photo from a trip years ago. A friend recently lost her dog, and I remembered that I had taken pictures of him when we visited her. So I tried to find them. No luck, but in a folder randomly marked random, I found myself. 

None of these pictures were ancient - no childhood or high school, not even my twenties - but they were so different from the image I had of myself at that time that they might as well have been of another person entirely. 

The photo here is me with several other members of the University City Garden Club, taken just a few years after I moved to West Philly. So, approximately 2003, the year before I met my husband. I was 39. I remember thinking I looked older. I thought I was overweight. I had various other criticisms that I thought were valid. 

Looking at it now, I realize that I looked like a freaking 12 year old. Maybe 16. Okay, 20. My skin was good, my boobs were higher, and if there was a little softness around my middle, it was offset by everything else I had going for me at the time. None of which I saw. 

Between modern standards of beauty that we take on board when we're too young to know better, criticism - well-meaning or not - dealt out over years, and our natural tendency to be harder on ourselves than we would be on anyone else we cared about, I don't think there's a woman alive so at one point or another who hasn't had an entirely unrealistic view of herself. 

Generally we look way better than we think we do.

This somewhat out of body experience has made me take a look at myself now. Not necessarily in the mirror. (Those are still not my favorite things.) But maybe, at 60, I don't look like I'm 70. Maybe my skin isn't that bad or that wrinkled. Maybe I'm not as chunky as I think I am - and even if I am, my body still does everything I need it to do without much complaint, and in the long run that is what's most important. 

Have you ever had an experience like that, seeing yourself in an old photo and not seeing yourself at all?

The scent of childhood

Late Saturday afternoon, my husband and I were out taking a walk when we heard a lot of sirens. I checked my phone - our county fire and police have a live dispatch app - and saw there was a house fire about two blocks from where we were walking. So obviously we walked that way.

Our town is technically a borough, and in our weird county, each borough has its own fire department, most of which is volunteer-run. You would think that would make the response less efficient, but the exact opposite is true. The call had gone out less than three minutes before we got to the block, and there were already four trucks there. The call goes out everywhere at once, and anyone who's available will show up - especially for a house fire, with the implied possibility of people being inside. 

It was pretty clear from looking at the firefighters that they already knew that wasn't the case. They were calmly going about their jobs. Moving quickly, yes, but not with the underlying anxiety of potentially having to rescue anyone. We stuck around for a while, and watched as another half dozen engines eventually appeared.

It was really cool watching them, all these men and women who obviously work together all the time, because the companies were acting interchangeably. At one point there were firefighters from three different companies balanced on the roof line, cutting a hole in the roof. Just the sight of that is enough to turn my knees to water. 

Everyone watching - and it was a lot of the neighborhood - had their shirts pulled up over their noses because it did stink. But to me, it also smelled like my childhood. My dad was a Philadelphia firefighter, and he came home everyday smelling like whatever blaze he fought. He could have probably showered at the firehouse, but he wanted to get home to his family and his bathtub full of scalding hot water where he could rinse off the smell and soak away his aches and pains. 

What happened to those two houses in town was tragic. The first house looks like a total loss. It was unoccupied at the time, though being worked on. The second house, adjoining it, has some pretty significant damage. 

But this is one of those times where I can hold two opposing thoughts in my head. Any loss by fire is tragic, but the smell of that fire took me straight back to my childhood, straight back to Sunday mornings on the curb with the other fire kids while our exhausted dads paced back and forth in front of the shell of a building and refought the fire until they were satisfied. 

Fire is bad. Fire is also the smell of my dad. And for that, I will always have a moment of warmth, and a smile, before my brain clicks over to the present. They say that smell is our strongest memory sense. I think they're right.

Snow day, rain likely

It snowed the other day, for the first time in a solid two years. We've been having a lot of rain, but I'd rather have snow - it's prettier, it makes everything quiet, and nobody gets a rain day off work. I had my husband at home on Friday because the university closed. 

The downside with snow is that it's also water. And that water began dripping through the corner of the back bedroom ceiling Sunday night. It's the outside corner of the roof, where it attaches to the downspout, so we figured it was most likely an ice dam - though I couldn't see anything from ground level - or the roofing surface had peeled back from the flashing at the edge and water was getting in that way. 

Either was bad. 

The water was dripping down the bookshelves in my husband's office. Bookshelves that hold his collection of graphic novels and comic books. Thankfully he is one of those collectors who puts everything tightly into a sealed plastic bag, or the weeping and wailing would have been tremendous. As it was, there was just sprinting with arm loads of damp plastic and the hallway still looks like a bookstore. Nothing is going back in until we're certain that the problem has been solved. 

After we got everything out of harm's way, I called a local roofer highly recommended by the town Facebook group. His wife got back to me promptly and he came out Monday afternoon. We've been in the house for six years now, and we really should have had the roof coated at some point. Note to self: that's what always happens when you put off a job, it comes around to bite you in the ass.

There's rain in the forecast. Fingers crossed it only occurs outside the house.

Insomnia

Rufus can always sleep.

I'll be 60 in January. No, I have no idea how that happened, and it's a topic for another day.

What I'm thinking about today - because I haven't slept - is another one of the benefits of aging. How much more I can get done be because I'm rarely tired at bedtime.

Peri- and then full-on menopause has been fun. Not. Would not recommend. Except for the parts that I would, like a better sense of what my body is going to do (gain weight, slow down, ache in random places) and the at-first-insulting but then rather wonderful realization that I'm now mostly invisible to a certain class of annoying people.

Which means I don't have to worry about impressing anyone except myself and the select few I care enough to want to impress. It's lovely.

All this to say, I couldn't sleep the other night. I listened to my favorite bedtime podcast, Nothing Much Happens, where a woman reads lovely, no conflict, low stakes stories that normally relax me and send me to sleep long before she's finished.

Except that night's episode was called The Pantry. It was a simple story about the kind of chores we put off, and how good cleaning and organizing your space can make you feel.

Not a good thing to tell me when I'm lying there, still with my tank half full. I wanted to get up and go down to the basement and organize things. I wanted to scrub the floor. That's how I knew I was stupid tired, because I never want to do that.

And guess what? Next day, did I get any of that done? 

Nope. 

Tomorrow is another day.

Long weekend

I had so many things planned for the long weekend - getting together with friends, going out to dinner, a few house chores a lot of sewing, and equal amount of writing (book three is chugging along), and since the weather was supposed to be mostly clear, a few grubby hours in the garden.

What did we do this weekend? Well, the weekend technically started early. Mario works from home Wednesday through Friday, and while he does put in a full day, his hours are somewhat flexible. But in fact he had a half day Friday, all day Saturday and Sunday, a half day Monday, and all day Tuesday.

I had So. Many. Plans.

And we accomplished almost none of them. On Friday, we got together with two friends to go to a new restaurant in town. We met at least ten other people there that we knew, which gives me hope the restaurant will succeed. It's a nice little place - mostly breakfast and lunch, but they serve dinner on Fridays - and they're ridiculously underpriced for the quality and quantity of the food they serve.

Saturday, we walked to the farmers market, but it was hot and sticky and our air quality was bad, due to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. We had coffee at the cafe and came home. I did a bunch of sewing, a little writing. A neighbor gave us an enormous package of baby spinach, so I sauteed that with backyard garlic and we had it for dinner.

Sunday, we slept in, walked slowly - heat and air again - to our favorite Mexican/Irish breakfast place. When we got home, I wrote and he hung out in his office inexplicable things on the computer.

I finally tackled a chunk of my to-do list on Monday. Laundry, cleaning, gardening, writing, so that I could have some down time with him on the holiday.

Our town no longer has official fireworks, because the organization in charge of them dissolved two years back, a combination of covid, several members retiring after decades of strong arming neighbors to chip in for the entertainment, and no new volunteers coming up. However, The unofficial fireworks have been happening from mid-afternoon until the middle of the night, every single day of long weekend.

Rufus likes fireworks about as much as as he likes the vacuum cleaner. I'm not a fan of the noise either, but it's acceptable behavior for him to go and hide in the basement until the noise is over, while I don't do that. I just grumble and swear.

Looking back, my long weekend was mostly about food. Which is never a bad thing, but on the other hand, I shouldn't be surprised when I look at the scale. A friend told me recently but the heavier you are, the harder you are to kidnap. I think she may be on to something.

Get out of the chair

I love what I do. 

I love that the stories and people who have been banging around in my head since childhood finally have an outlet, and that outlet is beginning to make an income. 

The issue is that writing, combined with my other source of income - sewing - means I spend a lot of time in one chair or another. And it's really hard, when the work is flowing, to remember that my body needs to get up and move around. 

I try to be disciplined about it, and set an alarm so that for 15 minutes out of every hour, I walk around the house or do the dishes or throw in a load of laundry. It gets me moving and gets a little housework done, which otherwise would only get done when I was procrastinating writing or sewing. 

But sometimes you need to get out of the house, not just the chair. And thankfully there are quite a few good walks in and near my town that I can talk myself into on a regular basis I'll stick in an earbud, put on a podcast, and just go. Sometimes if I'm working out a thorny plot point, a few miles on foot is just what I need. 

One of my favorite walks is up along the Darby Creek, to the Swedish Cabin, which has been there since the 17th century. Recently, a bridge was put in across the creek which leads up a walking trail on the other side. Last week, instead of going to the cabin and turning around, I crossed the bridge, kept going up Sycamore Road to Garrett Road, and then walked all the way down Garrett to where it intersects with Shadeland, which is the street at the top of my block. According to my phone, that was a solid 5 miles, and except for the half-mile stretch when I emerged from the trail on to Garrett where there was no sidewalk, it's a pleasant walk either through woods, a long trails, or through suburban neighborhoods. 

And at this time of year, it is green. Overwhelmingly, almost painfully green. Which I think is good for the soul.

Win/win

Last Saturday was complicated. 

One of the crazy benefits of our town is the annual town wide yard sale. When we moved here in 2018, we'd been here less than 2 months, and honestly, felt like we died and gone to heaven driving around our mile-square village with at least two participating houses on every block - selling good stuff. 

It didn't happen during the pandemic, but last year it came back. And it was still good. This year's yard sale was scheduled for 5/20, and I've been saving my money and looking forward to it.

Then, the night before, I got a phone call. A vendor wasn't able to make it to the Swarthmore Farmers Market, and did I want to fill in?

Swarthmore is less than 15 minutes up the road, it's a great town, with customers I've known for years, and I always do well at any appearance there. Also, I have a policy of never saying no to requests like that unless I'm already booked. So I said yes. Better to make money than spend money, I figured.

The forecast said rain late in the day, but the market was only from nine until noon. It was gray and drizzly when we left the house at eight, and stayed that way. Until it turned into a downpour. I had to put my books back in the car, because the covers were curling, and all three of my tables were shoved together under the center of the tent because, to make things better, it had gotten windy.

It was some of the most miserable time selling I've had since I started out. I made enough money to buy us lunch - except that by the time I was done, the only place I wanted to have lunch was under a blanket, in heavy socks, and at home.

Only one good thing happened. The vendor organizer, who owns a small shop in town, stopped by to thank me for showing up despite the weather, and fell absolutely in love with the new dressed critters I'm making. Her shop is more art then craft, so I've never had work in there before, but she left the tent toting an armload of animals and we're now talking about a special consignment for the holidays.

When I got home, I was wet and miserable. Later, I was dry, and cranky. It continued until late, when, because I had taken a crankiness-induced nap, I was up until three in the morning. But that point it hit me what a positive it had been - by showing up in crap weather, keeping a smile on my face, and doing what needed to be done, I've gotten a stockist I haven't been able to get in years, which will bear future fruit.

I would have rather made money than spent money. I didn't do much of either, but I have consolidated some future income from it, and that's not bad.

Also, the rain canceled the town wide yard sale and it happened on the next day. Win/win.

Fifty years

 

Fifty years ago today, my dad died. How the fuck have 50 years passed? Sometimes it feels like forever, but some part of me still feels like the kid who was taken to the hospital the week before to see him, who flung herself so hard at that beloved man in his shabby blue terry robe that my mom cried out to warn me.

I know it hurt him, understanding after the fact that the cancer had not only damaged his lung but his ribs. I know that hugs for a long time had probably hurt, and also that he wouldn't have traded them for a pain-free existence.

Whenever I was sick, I would tell my mom to keep him away, out of my room. Because I always wanted to be perfect for him. Stupid kid. I was perfect in his eyes.

He sometimes said, when I was sick, that he wished it was him instead of me. I'm glad I was old enough when he died not to have taken that upon myself, to somehow have blamed myself for my ear infections turning into his lung cancer.

A lifelong smoker. An asbestos worker in the shipyards during WWII. A welder. A firefighter in the tin helmets/iron men era, when they called themselves smoke-eaters. 

It's a miracle he lasted as long as he did.

He retired from the fire department around the time that respirators came in. It wasn't the same, and he was getting old - or so I thought, though he was only two years older than I am now when he died.

There's not a day when I don't think about him.

A night out

We had a night out this past week - Six was playing at Philadelphia at the Academy of Music and we treated ourselves to tickets. They weren't "Broadway" expensive, which is always good for the budget, but they were worth every cent. And the Academy is one of my favorite venues and will appear in the third of my 1930s books, so I looked around and took notes while I was there. 

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it, actually - since I've been steeped in Tudor history since I was a kid - but I enjoyed every bit of it. Like Hamilton, it's bound to get new people interested in that period of history, and also like Hamilton, it's full of catchy songs that I'm still humming a few days later.

From the first note, the lights and costumes and sheer energy of the show made me smile. I wasn't sure about my husband - he's very tolerant and actually well-versed in Tudor history these days - but going by the audience, this was going to be an absolute estrogen-fest. Groups of girlfriends, mothers and daughters, much squealing and shrieking.

It was fabulous. (And husband survived quite nicely).

It does make me wonder how the wives would feel about being remembered in such a way. Honored? Annoyed? Confused, definitely. They might not understand what a musical was, they definitely wouldn't understand this musical as "music" as it was defined in their day, and they might be offended at some of the portrayals (though they were definitely based on well-known facts, just well-known facts might not be quite factual for some of these ladies).

But still.. almost five hundred years later, they're remembered. And as one of the key questions goes near the end of the show, are they remembered simply because they shared a husband? Or is their husband remembered because of them?

Raining stones

Warning: may contain whining.

2023 has had more complications than all of 2022, and possibly 2021. I started this whole journey toward cataract clarity in mid-January. The plan was to be finished by the time my birthday rolled around on the 31st. Ha! 

We know how that's gone. I had my second procedure last Tuesday, and as far as the actual cataract removal went, it was the picture-perfect operation that the first one should have been. Ten minutes, done. The thing nobody explained to me, and I didn't think of myself, was that with my eyes original lenses being removed with the cataract, and being substituted with distance lenses, I lost all close vision.

Imagine, if you will, my reaction when, not seeing my phone clearly, I brought it up to my face and it went completely out of focus instead of the reverse. Panic ensued. Loud, annoying, somewhat frantic panic.

Add to this that my sewing machine died last Monday. It was a 6-year-old inexpensive Brother machine, so not worth repairing. I ordered another one, and it came yesterday. We're getting acquainted - I have the seam allowance marked with blue painter's tape so I can see where I'm going.

Beyond that, our oven has decided that it will not go to any temperature above 100°. It did that once last week, and we turned it off and reset it at 350° and it worked, but the other night, we decided to put a pizza in the oven and the oven laughed. And laughed.

I will deal with that later.

Vision-wise, I had a follow-up appointment the day after surgery and badgered my eye doctor into giving me an interim prescription that I then ordered from one of those 24-hour eyeglass places - which do not deliver in 24 hours, but it's still better than waiting the potential several months until all the residual inflammation goes down and I have a steady prescription. 

In the meantime, some of the inflammation has gone down, and I am able to read and function at a closer level than I was immediately after surgery. There's still a fair amount of swearing involved, but I'm not sure if that's frustration or just me.

Watch this space

I finished my final edits this week, formatted the ebook, then formatted the paperback. Then I cracked open the ebook file and found... a typo. And that's why I have other readers, because you can't see everything, especially after going over a book this many times. 

So I'll keep reading same make those few final final tweaks, and turn my attention to Coming Together, the final book in my Ava and Claire series.

It would be so much easier if I could make an outline and write in order, but that's not how my brain works. I've fought against it, but we've come to terms, my brain and I. I'll respect how it wants to give me the story, and it will keep giving me stories.

Because I write historical, there is obviously some outlining that can't be avoided; I need to hit certain historical marks or the books won't be taken seriously. So I put the points on the timeline that can't be ignored, and figure out what other things - often smaller or local - will impact my characters, and they go in, as well. Then I can think about the larger points of the story. For this series, I have a triple timeline, going down the page in three columns: one for Ava, one for Claire, and one for unavoidable history.

Once I have those events noted down, I let my mind wander. The book comes to me in snippets, often conversation or locations. I'll write it all down or dictate it, and later I'll try to put these bits in order. Most don't fit, yet. So I have an actual book document and a second document for snippets, which holds all those brain bits. I pull from that when I get stuck and need words.

At my worst, I've had 30k words in the snippet document. The challenge is to use all of them, in one way or another, in the final manuscript. For Coming Closer, I ended up with less than 50 words left in the document, so major win. Not all of them were used - some were rewritten, and some deleted, but all of them were thought about.

The third book will happen now. I know this because when I formatted the ebook for Coming Closer, I put an order link for the final book in the back. I can't do that without putting it up for preorder. If it's on preorder, it exists, I just have to make it happen.

Watch this space.

Small Things

This will be a random update post, because a lot of small things are happening. First, and not small, actually, is my second cataract surgery is scheduled for March 14. I got my sutures out last week - which was a surprising non-event, considering how terrible it sounds - and the doctor said I had healed well enough that it was time to do the second eye. I didn't think I'd be up for it, but I'm at the point of wanting to get this whole procedure over with. Not only that, but season 3 of Ted Lasso premieres the next day, and I operate on a reward system. 

Second thing, it's contractor season. We had a warm day last week, and I was outside cleaning up the garden. In the side yard, I found a chunk of concrete. Which turned out not to be a chunk of concrete, but a chunk of stucco off the top corner of the house. Monday afternoon, the stucco repair guy came to fix that, and several other cracks. The day before, the electrician was in because the light switch in my sewing room was stuck in the off position. At least if it had been stuck on, I could have turned it off by way of the chain on the ceiling fan. But, no...

We're on the slippery slope toward craft show season, so I've been doing a lot of sewing of my new critters, whose name, I think is going to be Pet Frocks. It was suggested by a neighbor, and even though there were other suggestions, it's stupidly perfect. 

And last, but far from least, I am four chapters from the end of final edits of coming closer. Then I send it to my proofreading friend and do a final read-through on my Kindle, because I see different mistakes when I read in a different format, and then I'll upload it for publication on April 18. Despite all the delays caused by the eye surgery, I'm right on time. 

How are things going in your neck of the woods? Are your houses behaving?