I’ve crawled up from the end-of-year doldrums and am working to get back on track in the week ahead. The new year brings with it some new and old challenges: the first being settling into a new day job and the second being (yet another) looming deadline on LOSING GRAVITY (sobs).
I start each morning ahead of day job with a dedicated co-writing time via Zoom with some writing friends, which has helped my productivity. I’m still dragging, but I have a stable routine now.
The new year is generally a time to look back on past accomplishments and mistakes and resolve to do better, or at least… differently. I had my fair share of good, bad, and lucky last year. I expect this year to be a mix of about the same. Certainly my goal is to continue being kinder to myself and taking better care of this aging carcass of mine. The last five years of political and social punches have been hard on me, and I wasn’t coping well. Coming up with new coping strategies and altering my diet and behavior remains an ongoing slog, but a necessary one.
Getting me through the year-end doldrums has been a boatload of television. I enjoyed both The Wheel of Time adaptation and the new season of The Witcher. I also seem to have burned through every last one of the Inspector Lewis and Inspector Morse episodes, and finally had to resort to the new Miss Marples (I don’t like the second actress as much as the first). I also continue to read too many Jack Taylor novels (I’m on like number 15 of 18??).
I’m also working through a bucket of books from the library about garden design and slave laws in ancient Rome and the Americas.
Fresh Fiction
I’ve got two new stories for you from the Hurleyverse:
“Behold the Storm,” is about a couple of cocktail connoisseurs who discuss the sins of their forebears and learn some surprising secrets about one another.
The second piece is more of a prose poem, “Oh, Sing of the Wretched City.” Inspired by both Ozymandias and “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas.”
Facebook Author Page
I deleted Facebook in 2012 and never looked back, but my PA, Tim Minneci, convinced me that he’d manage a Facebook author page there and I’d never have to touch it!
So if you still get your daily fix on Facebook, you can follow me there for updates, giveaways, book recs, links to new stories, etc.
Visit the Hurleyverse on Facebook
And finally, some winter garden and dog pics:
Be excellent to each other.
