So it occurs to me I should let you know I’m alive.
It’s just Cheese! Penguins! Wife!
Which in our house is the way to say “I’m going nuts.”
I’m really late on all deadlines. The pred prescription is held up, and benadryl messes me up. (Is held up. We changed insurance. Things are being weird, yo.) So I can take benadryl and not work because I feel drunk, or not take benadryl and itch all night and not sleep.
BUT I’m finishing the refargain Barbarella script before my editor trusses me like a goose or something, because I’m holding the team up.
And then Father Murphy needs to finish fighting demons.
Posts…. later. Sorry.
Yes, there are tells of mid-journey art. BUT the robot looks like I’m feeling. Like it’s spinning in place AND falling apart.
According To Hoyt 
I know the feeling. The new owners decided they didn’t want me back (after telling me what a good job I did), so no pocket money. Not in trouble, just feeling the loss. And irritated. (There are other things going on there I don’t feel I can share). House is a mess, we have either a squirrel , poltergeist or a brownie stealing my knitting notions and chewing through stuff, and the preacher has wuflu and just gave it to his wife, so guess who’s giving the message Sunday?
I think I’ll run errands and take a walk. That’ll burn off some energy and I think better walking.
And I’m feeling like an idiot.
I have this idea that I should know this Father Murphy that Sarah keeps mentioning. 😉
Was mentioned on the Discord, I think, he met his brother after a war.
You’re probably thinking of Father Brown, though. Because Chesterton is awesome.
Well, I know Father Brown but he opposes human evil not demonic evil (or at least not directly). 😉
I’ll see if I can find the Good Father Murphy on Discord. 😀
Found the story!
Now why am I thinking that “The French Woman” was a Vampire?
Of course, she might be a Demon. 😈
There’s a Discord?? Is it a referral thing? Legacy admissions? A written test? Or can any old schlub join?
I think the best route is through Cedar’s Book Club With Spikes, actually, she says and is totally not farming up more membership…
https://discord.gg/U33hBbnd
Time and number limited link, because we haven’t had any trolls show up yet.
Ders discord, and datcord, and da uddercord.
And detcord….
It’s a short story for a Chris Kennedy Antho. I promised. I posted snippets in writing in Huns
Write like the wind!
From my all-time favorite MAS*H episode-
Col Flagg: Turn your backs.
Hawkeye and company: stares.
Col. Flagg: “They call me the Wind. Nobody sees me coming or going.”
Hawkeye and company: stares
Col. Flagg: “Look, unless you turn your backs I’m NOT GOING.”
Hawkeye and company: promptly turn their backs
(Crashing sound).
Hawkeye (looks out the window): “I think the wind just broke his leg. ”
So, for Sarah, not that wind!
Feel better soon!
Thumbs up Immune systems. Can’t live without ’em, sometimes can’t live with ’em….
I currently have an older historian and a ticked-off teenager trying to figure out how to get loose of a “living infectious ghoul” situation!
(Life will get better for them. But I need to smash stuff up first….)
LOL
Rueful Let’s just say, thank goodness for antihistamines and antifungals. AAUUUUGGHHH.
I get it. I GET it.
Hugs
I’m pretty sure one night antihistamines saved my life from a severe allergic Black Dog spiral.
And lately – stress. Too much stress. Sigh.
Dang. Well, prayers still going up regularly for you, gracious hostess, and maybe they’ll work eventually.
This robot can throw stuff. The Reader nominates it for the next carp launcher. https://www.popsci.com/technology/boston-dynamics-atlas-robot-hand-demo/
The Reader strongly identifies with ‘Blah’. He has had an almost migraine (hovering at the threshold and occasionally breaking it) for a week. He hates Imitrex with a passion (it messes with his head far more than Benedryl) but once in a while he has no choice.
C4C – forgot to check the dang box.
‘S OK. I started a meeting with my boss by saying, “Well, at least this morning I wasn’t attacked by a bacon sandwich while trying to leave the house.”
We both needed the chuckle.
My sympathies. I too have difficulty with Benadryl allergy or cold medicines, even OTC lower dosage. By the time I’d admit I was sick and shouldn’t go into the office (even if whatever was “just a cold”) the office had advance notice I was not only not coming in, and I wouldn’t be working from home. Taking the OTC made me feel good enough to work from home (breathing good), but it also made me woozy and sleepy. (Still makes me woozy and sleepy, but working is not a concern, now.)
Oops. Forgot the dang box … Again.
I do OK with topical antihistamines, but haven’t had the oral version in years. I didn’t have problems with Benadryl, though another mild one (something like chlorphenaramin maleate) was a too-good sleep aid.
The booby prize was atarax–was prescribed after ear surgery because I could not afford to sneeze for quite some time. If I took a pill of that, I needed to be in bed within 10 minutes or else. FWIW, atarax was originally marketed as a tranquilizer. Guess I slept tranquilly. 🙂
Dear Hostess –
You are most probably way over-extended. (You’ve admitted as much). Yes, to a professional author, the phrase “publish or perish” has a real-world meaning. But, looking in from the periphery, it seems that you risk
bringing a whole new meaning to the term “deadline”.
Suggestions; I have none. I’m just a fan. You have to honor those commitments that help keep the light bill paid. Perhaps throttling back on others (dare I say it?), such as this blog, that suck hours from your creative time could bring you relief. (Obviously, I love this blog. I love my daily (mostly) sanity fix. But I could probably taper-off a little). Maybe short WIP reports and plot/character flotations, vignettes, etc., would let you breathe a little. Your commentors here are erudite, witty, and charming (I exclude myself), and, no doubt, could help you mark time while you prepare us the next fire and brimstone screed-post.
Before I limp back to my cave, allow me to share my opinion that, despite assertions to the contrary, work done under deadline pressure is often just shoveling s**t and brings commensurate satisfaction.
I couldn’t possibly have expressed this even close to as well, and I fully concur.
Agree with both of you.
You shouldn’t. Not on work done under deadline. I’m not the only one who achieves miracles under deadline pressure. It’s pratically how writers write.
My problem is having been sick, and having the d*mn muse shouting something else in my ear.
I didn’t put it well. Paying work does come first, it has to. I think the idea was to focus on that and let us play quietly for a while.
Oh, yeah. Though the blog also sort of pays right now. (Kind of.)
BUT I have very few deadlines right now. Mostly the scripts and short stories, which would both have been delivered 2 weeks ago, except for my still recovering, then benadryl.
This recovery is taking very long and annoying me, but you know?
I was sick a long time.
I can neither confirm nor deny that multiple college papers and several short stories were written between the hours of ten pm and submission time (7ish) the next day by a person that could be mistaken for myself in dim light.
Or that the piece that originally got me published then hired back in the day was first written on a bar napkin.
But deadline miracles are practically mandatory for those afflicted with muse-related symptoms which may lead to writing…
It wasn’t the last sentence I was agreeing with, it was the preceding WRT concentrating on the important (i.e., bill-paying) stuff and slacking off on the other (not family, obviously). Sorry if I wasn’t clear; “fully concur” was hyperbole.
Eh. My problem is that I was sick for two months, which is not normal. It was a light month till then.
Meh. I’ve done some of my best work (judged by how it sells) to deadline.
It’s just…. since 2020 life has been nuts, but even then the continuous illness since November was…. rare.
Typical anime trope
Sarah dies from overwork and is reincarnated as a character in one of her stories.
Or take it up a notch.
Sarah, and everyone who ever read one of her stories suddenly finds themselves as characters within that story world.
Someone want to help me with this white coat? The sleeves are supposed to tie in the back.
I fully expect to be reincarnated in one of y series. With my luck I know which one.
Ah, so either you’re a young woman furniture refinisher who moonlights as an investigator, or you’re a genetically engineered superwoman? I didn’t think you wanted to come back as The Bard of Avon, and you’d really confuse your cats if you came back as a person who could transform into one. On the other hand, I’d bet a chocolate chip cookie that Dan secretly would love to have you reincarnate as Barbarella.
Oh, I wish. No. it will be the one I’m writing right now.
Feel better. I have the blah myself along with a large dose of meh and a touch of blech.
Ah. We’re about the same age. But getting better.
Lotta mileage on me. Playing contact sports into my 30’s has left me with lots of aches and pains. No regrets mind, but the aches and pains don’t care what I think about them.
I think I’m just tired of the general grime of it all — that and the eczema, and the rolling crud, and the short winter days, and the bloody clouds. Blah, meh, and blech,
Still, here’s to us, that’s like us. Damned few and they’re all dead.
Indeed.
And we go on.
A several decades younger friend meet with his doc on the 19th. Knee replacement on May 12th. He loved to play basketball, he now pays the price.. Me, the sedimentary one, has no knee pain, but just fell and damaged my dominant arm, so you never know what will hurt you.
You also never know what kills you. The important thing is to know where you are going, and that your beloveds will escort you over the rainbow bridge. For me the most frustrating thing about getting older is that my favorite authors die, and stop writing here. I expect for eternity we can read their continued stories. Time goes sideways in eternity, so writers will be multiple in Heaven.
I’m looking forward to everything Heinlein and Pratchett have written since death. Also Heyer. And Agatha Christie. And Pol Anderson. And Clifford Simak. And Bradbury. And and and and.
The older I get, the more dead people I know.
I read dead authors
I just can’t read their current output.
Thinking of my house with 12,000 books, most books have dead authors. With a book published in 1921, it is unlikely the author still lives (“The Pride of Palomar”, Peter Kyne, 1880 – 1957). A 1911 physics text used by my great uncle. The author (Arthur L. Kimball PhD, 1856-1922), 100 years dead. The books still live. Some facts now misinformation. They are time capsules.
Checked online. It is possible to look at a 1929 edition of the 1911 text, saved by the digital library of India. They corrected some of his “misinformation” in the 4th edition. Not the same as the physical book with my great uncles signature, noting his UC Berkeley use.
It’s not ‘misinformation’ just because it’s been supplemented by a better understanding of the universe. It’s just what they knew at the time. Was Gregor Mendel wrong about inheritance because DNA hadn’t been discovered yet? Was Newton wrong about inertia and gravity because relativity and quantum mechanics were unknown in his time?
I apologize for underestimating your stamina and implying that your work quality may be impacted. I have certainly enjoyed everything of yours I’ve got my hands on. (Example: I bought Through Fire within seconds of seeing Glenn boost it on Instapundit. I think I got the first one Amazon sold.)
And, yes, I have experienced the rush of knocking out surprisingly good stuff under deadline. As was said, “having only 12 hours to live concentrates one’s focus remarkably” or something.
However, undue stress has few if any health benefits. Maybe that’s what I meant. Again, apologies from a true fan.
No. It’s been mostly the stupid health.
I have remarkably few hard deadlines these days, but two months is too much to be sick.
Bleurgh.
I spent the day writing an urban fantasy that I have no idea where it came from or where it’s going, instead of something productive like filing or laundry, much less words on The Interminable WIP! Or the short I wanted to write for the antho whose deadline I’m not going to make!
sigh.
Some days, treading water is an accomplishment. Hang in there.
So sorry for your ongoing trials- FWIW, Prednisone is dirt cheap, if you find a pharmacy that will take your Rx and not bother with insurance, you should have it immediately. And IDK why they are jerking you, the Medipak, prednisolone, various forms, are not hard to find, or rare. Shop around, and most of all take care of YOU- you are the only *you *we gots!!!!
I know. They’re just being weird, honest.
It says a lot that I read that as, “They’re just being honest. Weird, huh.”
Need moar caffeine. (And a snow day and do NOT tell me that we just had a four day week last week.)
Today’s ear worm is brought to you by Paul McCartney and wings ‘Venus and Mars Rock Show’ . Which is really three songs all at once. ‘And no one is there to witness the end but my friend and confidant mademoiselle Kissy’.
O/T…I see that RFK Jr has also called the Covid nonsense a giant Milgram experiment…And the new NZ Premier wants to force everyone to get jabbed….,