Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Holiday Update

I'm as sick of writing these as you are of reading them, or would be if I were more rigorous about posting as these things happened.

So, this will be very brief.  First off, happy holidays!  Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Three Kings Day, St. Lucia Day, Ramadan, Yule, Winter Solstice, Hump Day, Space Movie Day, or whatever you might celebrate.  I wish you good and bright tidings for the holiday of your choice and for the new year!

Next up; I'm currently dealing with my second case of bronchitis since September, which ran right on the heels of my second case of pneumonia since November.  In fact, I never really recovered from the second bout of pneumonia, it just (ma)lingered, making me cough more and start to wheeze until my sinuses plugged up like a sewer with a fatburg in it and then I was coughing nigh-incessantly.  I'm on my second course of antibiotics for the last six weeks and hopefully this will clear things up.

I find it nearly impossible to write when I'm so sick I can't breathe without gasping like a goldfish in a cat's mouth or coughing until I vomit in my mouth, and that's been my state of health for basically the last two months.  So, not much progress to report other than I'm breathing much easier today than I was yesterday at the doctor's office.

Have a happy near year and hopefully I'll have more positive things to share come the turn of the calendar.  Thanks for your support!

Friday, August 21, 2015

Regarding My Knee Injury

Hi, all.  Just a quick note regarding my knee -- I've begun physical therapy that will last six weeks to see if I can avoid surgery for what the MRI says is two tears in my meniscus.  The pain has subsided, thanks to a few visits to my chiropractor to put my back and hips into place, but the weakness persists.  I also have some low-grade neuropathy and some other nerve-related -pathy, but since I'm no longer in constant pain, I'm not that concerned at the moment.  I have, after all, injured this knee repeatedly over the last twenty-five years.

Anyway, between the pain and writer's block and everything else that's been going on this summer, I've basically said screw it and gone on what I'm told is called a "staycation".  Done a lot of fishing, worked on lowering my stress level, and tried to get my brain back into gear.  Now, if only I had a laptop that I could stand to type on for more than a minute at a crack without cramping up or cursing Lenovo for such a shitty keyboard...  I might be able to get some work done.

I've been having some good ideas, so hopefully when I knuckle down and get back to work I won't hate what I'm writing so much that I'll actually get something done.

I'll update with regards to my knee and when I can get back to work.  Hammer will strike again.

Thanks for reading!

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Warning, Brief Info Dump Ahead

Brief, not briefs.  I am not going to discuss my underwear preferences or lack thereof on the internet...  Well, at least not in a blog post.  And I'm sure virtually all of you are sighing in relief.

You're welcome.

Okay, already distracted.

So, I went awfully quiet after posting frequently.  That's something I should explain because I'm sure someone is wondering what's up.

I've been dealing with what my doctor has diagnosed as an "internal derangement".  It's something that's been going on for 17.5 years (literally half my life) since Halloween, 1997.  Long story short, I had a night that ended with me pushing my kneecap back into place, and the next day the doctor who "fixed" my knee is no longer legally able to practice medicine in NY.

So what does that have to do with the here and now?  Simple.  It's become worse.  Much worse.  As in, I have a hard time standing, walking, or even sitting.  In fact, while being examined this past Wednesday afternoon, I became so severely dizzy while laying on my back and bending my knee that I couldn't sit upright after for several seconds.  The nerve involvement is that bad.  Often while bending my knee I will experience a burning/tearing sensation, and then I wind up feeling like I have a thousand fire ants crawling and biting around my kneecap.  Imagining that?  Sorry, I know how that must be, but that's what I get.  I'm also walking with a cane again, something I haven't had to do with any frequency for years.

Needless to say, it's hard to be creative when you can't sit still for any length of time, etc.  I've been transcribing the hand-written rough draft, but it's slow going thanks to the SHITTY keyboard on this laptop (Lenovo Z50-75, I do not recommend this, or any other, Lenovo product) and the pain, etc.

But I have a referral to an orthopedic surgeon, so hopefully I'll be getting my knee fixed within six weeks of my appointment, so that pushes it out to about three months before I can get surgery.  Then six more weeks of healing.

Alright, I'm out.  Thanks for all your support!

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

There's ALWAYS a Downside.

Apparently a lot of the traffic reaching my site is from Turkey these days.  I'm really thinking someone's using a VPN or TOR to look at my site.  I'm not sure if I should flattered or afraid.  Since the advice I've always received is "Be afraid!", I'm going to go with the latter.

Anyway, for anyone who got the reference in this post's title, way to go!  You just won an internet.


No sexism intended, that was just the picture that came up in a Google search.

Ahem.  Moving on.

So, to reference my title yet again, there's always a downside when it comes to a writer's choice of writing methods.  Mine makes me feel connected to the words, allows me to write virtually anywhere, and gives me near-stream-of-consciousness access to my inspiration/muse/etc.  That means my rough drafts are often rough, but in transcribing it to my computer's word processor I get the chance to edit on the fly.  So my first draft is significantly better, smoother, and often more inspired.

So...  The downside.  I'm basically writing things twice.  Writing longhand whenever the inspiration strikes me and continuing while the mood is upon me means I end up with a lot of pages needing typing.

A lot.

That's a lot of typing.  So much so that it's a little daunting, and I'm only talking about a single chapter.  I have a little over twenty-five pages to type up.  I realize that some of that will fall by the wayside (I knew it as I was writing it, but I refused to let that stop me from going with the flow.) as I'm editing it, but it's still a lot of work to do.  With that in mind, I'd best get back to it.

Thanks for reading!

Friday, April 3, 2015

What's the opposite of an update?

Sorry, but that just occurred to me.  And what would constitute said opposite, anyway?  Lying in an update?  Deflecting every question with noninformation?

Wait, the latter would make me a politician or CEO apologizing for, well, anything.

Okay, it was just a thought.  My brain does some odd things at weird times.

So, since this is the opposite of the opposite of an update, that makes this an update and someone might think at this point I'm just stalling.

STALLING!  Of course!  The opposite of an update is a stall, and not the cow/horse/engine kind.  In a sense, it's a shame pigs live in sties/pens, because then the comparison to politicians ends, though it's really not fair to domestic pigs because given a chance they live cleanly and take care of their young.

Well, I feel better.

Okay, update time.  Writing continues apace.  I'm doing a couple thousand words a day on average, though that's an estimation because I'm not counting what I'm writing longhand.  My word processor takes care of the actual word count when I'm typing, so I have a decent metric for said estimation...

Anyway.  Let's see how the editing goes once I get everything lined up.  I'm seriously not censoring myself when I'm writing because rough drafts are like that, but once I get into the first draft I may blood my axe until it needs some major sharpening.  We shall see, my friends.  Indeed we shall.

Oh, before I go, I have to say hello to the Aussie fan(s) who keep hitting my page from Google.com.au.  Hello!  I hope you have a pleasant winter.  It's still awesome to me that people a world away can see what I'm writing as soon as I'm done writing it, and have done so on more than one occasion!

Thanks for reading and, as always, thank you for your continued support!

Monday, March 30, 2015

Hello... Is this thing on? Oh, right, I forgot to flip the switch over here...

Well hello out there in the internet... World?  Tubes?  Networks?  Something, in any case.  Greetings from this tiny corner of the internet-thing.

To be honest, I'm sick of being formal -- it doesn't seem to net me any extra readers, garner me any ad revenue (because I'm not making any ads pop up on your computer if I can help it), or do anything for me except make me sound stiff.  My knee?  That's stiff, but that's a whole other story.  My writing, as any of you who have read it will probably agree, isn't.  My characters, fights, worlds, etc, are rough, yes.  But it's not stiff.

Anyway, I appreciate the support and kind words I've received via Twitter (which I will respond to as soon as I can) and elsewhere.   Life has been hell; crazy health issues, crazy relationship issues, crazy friendship issues, crazy weather, writer's block...  But I've gone over most of these before.  No point in rehashing the issues.

So I figured I'd give you guys, gals, and everything in between a quick update on what was going on.

Regarding my health:  I've had some severe medication issues.  When I say severe, I mean severe.  It's next to impossible to get anything done with the medication you're trying to take puts you in the bathroom for upwards of four hours a day.  I'm not going to go into details, you haven't done anything to deserve them that I'm aware of.  But I'm better now that I'm no longer taking said medication, though I'm sure my doctor will try to put me on the third member of the family when I see him in a couple weeks.

Regarding my relationship issues:  Crazy, crazy, stressful, crazy, stressful, stressful, stressful, crazy.  Now that I'm done with last week, I can talk about this week...  Only a mild exaggeration, purely for comedic effect.  Seriously, only a mild exaggeration.  Last winter I lost thirty pounds before February and gained them back by year's end.  This year instead of losing weight I lost hair.  To be honest, I preferred the weight loss, even if it meant everything from getting an ultrasound of my liver to genetic testing that came back with interesting results.

The weather may finally be settling down, so let's see how that goes.

And now for the one most of you are probably at all concerned about, the writer's block.  I've been writing a lot lately.  I gave in and went back to my old method of creating -- long-hand writing with a fountain pen (or two or four or...  Okay, I need to go through and count my pens again) for the rough draft, then typing it up and smoothing/editing while doing so, then going back and polishing it, etc.  I did roughly five thousand words in less than twenty-four hours a few days ago.  It's mostly been scrawling things out since, but I figure I did a couple thousand words yesterday.  That's a lot of writing, at least long-hand.  Going to be a lot of typing later, and I'm excited at the prospect.

So what am I writing?  I can only write what my muse lets me.  In this case, it's not Rogue.  Sorry, folks, but I'll get back to that soon.  I'm working on the sequel to Triggerbreak.  Some of you might question why I'm writing the sequel to a book that's sold somewhere around forty to sixty copies, especially when there's still demand for the Subject 12 sequel, and you'd be right to do so.  My answer has already been given, though.  I can only write what my muse lets me.

Speaking of Rogue, I do have some good news on that front.  I've decided to go ahead and write what I'd originally planned.  That means serious tie-ins to both books that came before, but mostly it'll just be more Hammer-y goodness for those of you who like that kind of thing.  The bad news to go with the good is I'm going to finish this project, which I'll reveal more about when I get closer to the end of it, before I get back into Hammer's head.

Speaking of heads, any of you remember the short-lived Fox sitcom Herman's Head?  I liked that show, but in retrospect it was pretty-well doomed from the get-go.  Still, it was better than CBS's utter waste of time, Partners.  Holy crap, if there was ever a poster child for bad chemistry, bad writing, and banal directing, this show was in the running.  There was zero chemistry between anyone on the show except the gay partner and the girlfriend, and that was for about two minutes in one scene of one show.  None of the characters had any depth, it was just badly-written joke after unfunny joke after insultingly-bad or outright insulting joke, and nobody was believable as anybody in the show.  Hell, half the time it seemed like they never even rehearsed together, it was just a couple minutes in front of a mirror before they went to the soundstage to film.

Ah, should have been a TV/movie/restaurant critic.  Anyone know of any openings in the northern part of New York for any of the above?  Drop me a line in the comments.  Heck, drop me a line in the comments over anything.  I swear I'll do better about responding in the future.

Thanks for reading!  Back to work for me!

P. S.  In case anyone thought I was being something other than attempting to engage a little with my last two blog posts...  Shame on you!  (Just kidding.)

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Well, Back to Work.

Okay, nobody wants to talk.  That's fine.  Guess I'll get back to work, then.

Have a nice day, everyone!

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Let's Talk

There are things we don't talk like to admit to that we all do.  Then there are the things few of us have done:  Stolen to feed ourselves or our family.  Killed in self-defense.  Washed the blood of our enemies off our faces while staring at ourselves in the cracked bathroom mirror of a closed gas station, trying to ignore the disgraced doctor stitches up a knife wound in our thighs with nothing to dull the pain except a light dusting of some unknown powder said doctor had been stuffing up his nose ten minutes before.  Stab a needle into our legs to inject farm store penicillin every day for a week while delirious from fever, the only saving grace the burning pain from the injection lost in the agony of the infection slowly eating away at our wound.  The nightmares so lovingly called "fever dreams" claiming us every time we pass out, only to snap awake and stare at the water-stained ceiling of a condemned motel that was far too close to the hunters, the police, to allow any rest while awake.

But maybe we need to talk about these things, lest we forget they ever happen; lest we doom ourselves to repeat them.