So, where are things at?
Well. my agent’s been swamped with stuff and only just got to start reading GJD a week or so back (as you’re reading this, not as I’m writing it). Life happens, sometimes things get slowed down. We’re both still hoping this means we can get it in front of editors before the end of the year. For a few reasons I won’t bore you with right now.
(I started to write them all out and then realized “this’ll probably be really boring to about 83% of the people reading it” )
My current project, TOS, is at about 41K words. I spent the last week or so of July just scribbling like mad, filled up two more legal pads, and now I’m in the slow process of transcribing it all. This is kind of how I wrote Paradox Bound. Longhand on legal pads and then typing it up becomes a sort of preliminary clean up/ edit pass
Why so much at the end of July? Why so slow transcribing? Well, as it turns out…
I’m on vacation.
Yeah, taking the month off. All of August. The whole thing. Yes, I’m very aware how super-lucky I am to be in a position to do that. Also, yes, it’s almost disturbing to not be working on anything for this long.
Which is part of the reason I’m doing it.
See, my partner and I haven’t had a real vacation together in years. I think last one was in… 2006? Around there. Before I was writing full time and definitely before my career took off in any way. Since then I might take a week off, but she’ll usually keep working on her own projects. Or maybe we’d take two weeks at the holidays, but holiday time gets filled up fast with visiting friends and family and, y’know, holiday stuff. And let’s be honest– either way, how often does “taking a few days off” quickly become “doing all those random errands around the house” …?
Another thing is… well, ugly truth of the world is the climate is shifting. A lot of places have had really hot summers and/ or extreme weather events. Here in southern California, we’ve shifted into more of a hot late-summer early fall. Two or three years in a row now, August means regular temperatures of 100+. We’d be blissfully happy when it dropped into the mid-90s because we could work without our computers overheating. Which really meant we spent most of August hot, frustrated, and… well, not working anyway.
So last year we decided y’know what– let’s just plan on not working in August. Let’s take the month off and catch up on reading, gardening, gaming, hobbies, whatever else we want. Do all the stuff that always feels like it’s “other stuff we need/want to do.”
And we’re not being monsters about it. I mean, we both like writing,a lot, so if one of us has this sudden flash of inspiration, we’re not pointing fingers and shrieking accusingly. I’ve been doing some transcribing every day of that end-of-July rush. The ranty writing blog. This newletter, obviously.
Yeah. Vacation. It’s been kind of nice. A little distrubing, like I mentioned above.
In other news…
This is the last newsletter you’ll get through Substack. The newsletter isn’t going away, mind you, it’s just… going away from Substack. I’ll be migrating the mailing list over to either Buttondown or just straight through WordPress. Mentioned this last time, but if you’ve changed your mind about having your email shifted to a new list, I get it. Just say the word.
For the rest of you– you should see this same time as always next month.
Anyway,,,
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching— Good Omens 2. The Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover was such pure joy I’ve already watched it three times.
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading—The Endless Vessel by Charles Soule. Cult Classic by Stephen Blackmoore, Atomic Robo: The Vengeful Dead by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener
Cool New Toys – Just after the last newsletter I found something I’ve wanted for years—a Comic Con exclusive Micronauts set. An impulse purchase over that weekend has also left me with a small collection of Star Wars: Mission Fleet ships and figures, most of them centered around The Mandalorian. I have a pile of action figures I need to free from their packages, so check out Instagram if that interests you at all.
