Well hello, stranger!

Whew! It’s a bit dusty ’round here… my cat, however, is PRISTINE.

That is… ahh: Hi! How are you? Long time no see!

…

How’s the family…?

Yeah, I got nothing.

Okay, well maybe not nothing. Things have been hopping around the old homestead these past few months. Plus, it’s SUMMER (But don’t tell the PNW weather… I’m hoping it’ll skip the whole 80+ degree temperatures this year. I’m quite happy with the 65-70 degrees we’ve had to this point.) and I have always had a harder time writing when the hours of darkness get down below 8 per night.

So what’s been going on with me?

How about a list:

• BOOK! But you knew that. It’s not news, nor has it taken up a lot of time, but one thing they don’t talk a lot about when they tell you about writing books is that after you’ve gone to the trouble of writing a book, worked hard to tell your story and filled up a couple hundred pages to do so, you then need to do it again, only shorter. Let’s say… one to two pages. That should be easy, right? Just take your 400 page novel and… condense it. Like soup. But don’t worry – you don’t need to include EVERYTHING. Just the important stuff. Surely your book doesn’t have more than a page or two of important stuff in it, right?This is called writing a synopsis. Synopses suck. And no, mine’s still not done.
• BURGLARY! No, I haven’t taken up a life of crime. Rather than committing burglary, I was, in fact, burgled. Someone decided my home looked like the local Best Buy, walked in, picked over the selection of laptops and walked out with the newest available. And hey – no cashier, so it must be free, right? Bastards.Yes, we called the police. No, they didn’t catch who did it. Yes, people suck (almost as much as synopses!) No, I didn’t lose my work. Yes, the laptops were replaced. Thank you, State Farm, for the LOVELY new machine. Fuck you, burglar, for making it necessary.
• MOVING! We didn’t go far – just 10 miles south of where we were before, but that’s 10 minutes closer to the ferry and 10 minutes less my lovely wife has to drive to get to and from work. Baby steps indeed. Even so, packing up 4 people’s stuff (and we have considerably more than the standard stuff allotment in this family), moving it, cleaning up after it, and then unpacking it all again? Takes me some time. And beer.
• Did I mention it’s SUMMER? That’s significant for at least three reasons: A- Kids are home. B- Days are long C- Nights are short. See, Night time is the Write time. For me, anyway. Less night? Less write. But I have done a fair bit more reading than I did in the Spring. Perhaps I’ll let you in on what I’ve been reading in a future post. If you’re good…

So maybe you thought I’d kicked the habit? Given up writing and gone on to something more … respectable? Like maybe selling live bait? Or lint collection? Or the law? (Okay, I’m clearly kidding on that last one. The only profession less respectable than writer HAS to be lawyer.) Well – no such luck! As the summer winds down, the writing bug begins to stir and one day soon my cat will look up at me with those big, sad eyes and say ‘Feed me, you prick!’

No, wait… I was thinking of the children. The cat looks up and says… Well, the cat doesn’t say anything, you know. It’s a cat. It doesn’t have the power of speech. But if it did, it would probably say, ‘Why don’t you vacuum me anymore??’

Actually, that’s not true either. It hates the vacuum. It hates me, too, as far as that goes. And it never looks me in the eye, just points its ass in my direction and kicks up its heels like I’m a giant turd it doesn’t care enough to cover.

Well, hell – that metaphor’s gone all to crap now, hasn’t it?

The point is: Hello, stranger. Nice to see you comin’ round.

What’s been going on with you?

Your Friendly Neighborhood Writer