Well, here we are… finally. Spy for a Lost Cause, the sixth and final installment in the Adventures of Grant Scotland series is now available for purchase on Amazon as an ebook or paperback. I guess that makes the whole thing some sort of… hexalogy? That can’t be good. Makes it sound like it’s full of blood rituals and eldritch curses. Oh, wait… Yeah, I guess that kind of fits.
I’d rather call it a sextet. That’s one of those words that sounds dirty but isn’t. Unfortunately, I can’t call it that. It’s not appropriate. A sextet is six musicians playing together. With their instruments, I mean. Or just their mouths – voices, I mean. Seriously, it’s NOT a dirty word.
…what?
I have to say that I’m happy to conclude this series. It was always fun to write about Grant and to develop his world, but even before I started writing Lost Cause, I knew I was ready to move on to other projects. Writing a book is hard, but writing a six-book series is… exhausting. The biggest problem was that the series was never intended to end in six books. In fact, initially, I never intended to end it at all. Grant was supposed to be this James Bond/Philip Marlowe type who goes on adventure after adventure in a more or less static world.
Somewhere along the line (while writing Troubled King, I think) I realized I couldn’t write that sort of series. I’m not sure exactly why. I guess I felt that fantasy worlds are supposed to change. I expect a fantasy hero to have a significant impact on their world. If they didn’t, something about the story would just be unsatisfying. Maybe it wouldn’t bother most readers, but it bothered me as a writer.
I probably just didn’t know how to do it at the time. I’ve learned a lot about writing over the last ten years. I can now see how serial fantasy could work, if I ever wanted to try it again. I’m not sure what I’ll write next. I have a ton of ideas, some of them even have rough outlines already. I suppose I’ll just start throwing some ingredients together and seeing what tastes good.
After writing that sentence, I want chili. So now you want chili, too.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy Spy for a Lost Cause. You can buy the ebook here. And you can buy the paperback here.
I’m working on formatting a version for Smashwords, which will allow the ebook to become available for Nook and Apple and all the rest. I’ll post again when it’s ready. At some point in the future, I may combine books four, five, and six into a single volume, but I’m hesitant to do that simply because book six is so large. I might do it for the ebook version, but likely not for the print.
Hi there! I just wanted to let everybody know that the sixth and final book in the Adventures of Grant Scotland series, Spy for a Lost Cause, will be available for purchase on January 23rd. You can preorder the ebook, if you’re into that sort of thing, or wait until the 23rd to buy either the ebook or the paperback. They are currently only available on Amazon.
I’m working on getting an ebook version out to Nook, Apple, and other e-tailers by the 23rd, but those platforms require different formatting, so those may be delayed a bit. I’ll keep you posted.
That’s all for now. I hope you are all doing well and getting through January okay. It’s such a long and dull month. It has one holiday, and it’s one that commemorates a dude that got assassinated. A bit joyless, right? Unless you have a birthday in this month (and I know several delightful people who do) it just seems like a month you need to get through. It needs some kind of celebrative holiday stuck in there somewhere.
So let January 23rd be henceforth known as Grant Scotland day!
I’m just kidding. Or maybe I’m not. It would be a terrible holiday. I mean, how would you celebrate it? Drink too much whiskey and lie to your friends about what you do for a living? Just seems like a bad idea.
I hope your whole situation is going satisfactorily. Not too much stress. Not too much work. A copious amount of alcohol.
I hope you are surrounded by people you love (or at least don’t mind). I hope you don’t feel too bad about yourself for all the egg nog and sweet treats you consumed. Don’t worry about it. Happens to us all. It’s cold and dark outside. The two things our bodies want to do during this time of year are eat and sleep. Perfectly natural.
Don’t let it get you down. There are no more feast holidays in the near future. We’re entering the bleakest months of the year. There will be nothing but a long stretch of toil, depression, and hopelessness until we finally claw our way out of our holes to blink at the spring sun. So, no surprise cakes, pastries, or confections to worry about! Well, I guess there’s Valentine’s Day, but I don’t see that as a caloric threat anymore because I am not allowed to go in the candy aisle without adult supervision.
So, with any luck, by spring we’ll have burnt those extra holiday pounds away and be ready to make that sexy “frolicking on the beach” TikTok video we’ve been fantasizing about in our sad attempts to reclaim our youth!
No? Just me?
Okay… Awkward.
Fine. Instead of figuring out the perfect camera angles from which to show off my sculpted (Rubenesque) body, I’ll just publish a book.
YES! After a loooooooooooooong wait, the final Grant Scotland book, Spy for a Lost Cause, is ready for release. I can’t say which day (depends on when I can get a stretch if time to negotiate the avenues of self-publication that I haven’t travelled in years) but it will be out sometime in mid to late January.
Of 2024. So, like, reeeeeeaaaaaaaaal soon.
So, what is Grant up to now? Well, as usual, it’s difficult to summarize. Suffice it to say that he’s in over his head (also as usual). Have a look at this to get some idea:
Things are actually quite a bit worse for Grant than the cover suggests. I tried to get my artist to make a cover where “everything is on fire, and everyone is dead” but he didn’t think the title would read very well without changing the signature color scheme.
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine. Whatever.
I’m just kidding. I adore this cover. I want to sleep with it and promise it things I can’t possibly deliver.
I am very pleased with the book. It was very hard to write, mainly because of just how much material I needed to address from previous books in order to wrap up the series. And because it was hard to write, that made it hard to read, so there was a TON of revisions. But it’s all done now and it’s ready for release. I’ll update the blog again when it hits the streets!
So, here we are in June, and you may have noticed that book I promised would be out by May is… not out yet. It turns out that the amount of wholesale rewriting that I needed to do during the revision process was much bigger than I had anticipated. In my initial time estimate, I had overlooked the fact that I had been writing this book for over three years. The plot changed so much over those years that the first ten or so chapters had almost nothing to do with what I wrote in the past year and a half. So… yeah. A lot of rewriting.
Yes, Papa, I know… I just forget sometimes.
But the good news is that part of the revision process is now done (fingers crossed). Now, it’s all polish and review for continuity. I can’t offer a new release date at this time (maybe I’ve learned my lesson) but it will be out by the end of the year. Maybe October? Maybe sooner?
Believe it or not, this sort of makes sense in this instance.
In other news, Jagged Alliance 3, the computer game for which I’ve been writing story and dialog, has a release date! It’s coming out for PC on July 14th. It’s fair to say that I’m incredibly excited. It’s been such a joy, honor and privilege to pen lines for some of the most memorable characters I’ve experienced in my own game-playing life. I look forward to hearing what fans and critics think with a mixture of giddy anticipation and vomit-inducing anxiety.
Sorta like a first date with a stone-cold fox.
Or a first date actually WITH Fox. She’s a character in the game. If you know, you know.
Anyway, check out the latest trailer while you wait for the next installment of the Adventures of Grant Scotland. (Spoiler: It won’t be done by the time you finish watching the trailer)
Hey, guess what? You know that book that I promised would be finished like, um… a year ago? Well, it’s FINISHED! The first draft of the sixth and final Grant Scotland book is complete. Weighing in at a little over 110,000 words, it’s about 25,000 words longer than any of the previous five.
And it might grow a bit more during revision. Or it might shrink. Or it might stay roughly the same. The revision process does what it needs to do, so we’ll see what happens. I predict about three months of revision and a month of production should get the book into good shape for release. So, the release date is tentatively set for early May.
And what are we calling this book, you may ask? Well, I’m calling it “the pain in my ass that is now subsiding” but YOU can call it…
SPY FOR A LOST CAUSE
The sixth and final installment in the Adventures of Grant Scotland sextet (such an exciting word!) will answer all the major questions about Grant, his world, and his place in it, as well as wrapping up most (but not all) of the secondary plotlines. As I reviewed the first five books, I realized there are just too many characters and threads to fully tie everything off in any sort of satisfactory way that wouldn’t also make the book almost unreadable. But I’m of the opinion that some things should always be left up to the reader’s imagination. Spelling out every last detail of a fictitious world or story just makes for tiresome reading.
So, that’s it. Just thought I’d give you all a quick update to let you know the long wait is almost over. I’m now enjoying a wonderful break from doing any sort of work at all. I hope the same is at least mostly true for all of you.
If you’ve been watching Disney’s Star Wars show “Andor” then you’ve likely seen the latest episode, “One Way Out.” If you haven’t, then I highly recommend you do. This entire series is perhaps the best Star Wars we’ve seen since the original trilogy. No, I’m not exaggerating. It’s a different sort of Star Wars, but the quality lands in a way reminiscent of the first movie. People knew about cliffhanger serial drama at the time Star Wars erupted onto movie screens, but they were not prepared for what they saw. It’s the same thing with Andor. People know about streaming serial sci-fi, drama, and action, but none of us were prepared for what we’re now witnessing.
If you’ve seen the series, then read on. If not (and if you’re not a Star Wars fan), none of the rest of this post will make sense to you. A few days after I saw the latest episode, I had an idea that someone should create a mashup of Elton’s John’s song “Sacrifice” with various scenes from the entire franchise in homage to perhaps the most powerful monologue I’ve seen in any Star Wars product to date.
If you know, you know.
“On Sacrifice” – Luthen Rael
I couldn’t get this monologue, nor certainly Stellan Skarsgard’s delivery, out of my head for days. Something about his words made me look back on what all the Star Wars characters have sacrificed for what they believed to be right. Yesterday, I went out for a run and decided I didn’t want to wait for someone else to create a mashup. Be warned, I have neither the talent nor the patience and time (never mind the license) to create a proper mashup, but I had to create what was in my head. So, please enjoy Elton John’s “Sacrifice” (link below, but the video does not refer to anything I am thinking of in this post) played in a separate tab while looking at the images.
Also, I grabbed these images from everywhere on the internet in all different types of formats, so I apologize for how (or even if) they appear on your screen. It’s best experienced if you view the images timed to when the lyrics are sung, but I’m not here to tell you how to live your life.
Hey! I know it’s been a while since I updated the blog. Sorry about that. I guess I’ve been focusing my writing energy on projects and these posts usually take a lot out of me for some reason. Not sure why. Maybe it’s a hold-over from me being naturally shy and introverted. Maybe it’s because I try to make this blog as brutally honest as I can about my experience of being a self-published author. Maybe it’s just that it’s a tiring struggle trying to balance those two things. More likely, it’s a lack of interest. In the beginning, I was all excited to proclaim to the world “Hey! I’m a writer! Weeee! Look at me! These are my books!” and now I’m just like “I write for a living. It’s really hard. I love it. Leave me alone.” Is that bad? That’s probably bad. Okay, I’ll add that to my “stuff to work on” list. For real. I have a list. It’s right here on my desk.
But this blog is not just about me, it’s about you… and me. So, let me go first. I’ll blab for a while and then you can tell me what you’ve been up to. If you don’t want to share with the group, that’s completely fine. We’re all here for you no matter what, especially me – except when I’m not, and by looking at the frequency of my posts… that is most of the time. Ummm… OH BOY, do I have a ton of updates for you on what I’ve been up to!
“Dear readers, please excuse my complete absence from this blog.”
UPDATE ONE: Sometime in June, I decided to do myself a favor and quit my delivery job to focus on my writing this summer. At some point late last year, I began to realize that the time I was spending delivering might be better spent writing, so I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while. The years 2020 and 2021, I was delivering pizzas full time and working about twenty hours a week on the writing for Jagged Alliance 3. It was exhausting and I found I was making very little progress on finishing the next Grant Scotland novel. I know there are success stories out there from plenty of authors about how they work three jobs and raise two kids and still find time to write novels. Let me be clear so there is no confusion – I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE. I need time to fuck around. My fuck around time is very important to me. Thus, I quit pizza delivery for the summer and am making HUGE progress on finishing Grant Scotland Six (title reveal coming soon). I’ll probably go back to delivery again in the fall, but I’m thinking I’ll work for one of the on-line delivery services so I can keep my schedule flexible.
If binge watching Stranger Things instead of working is wrong, I DO NOT WANT TO BE RIGHT!
UPDATE TWO: I am running a Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign for a group of friends via ZOOM meetings! I started creating it sometime in 2021 and have basically written a full book about the lore, peoples, and places. I know, I should have been writing Grant Scotland, but I also know I’m not the only writer who starts taking on new projects before finishing old ones. Don’t judge. And sometimes my fuck around time yields something productive, so who knows? Maybe this will yield publishable material. We’ll see. That wasn’t the reason I wanted to do it. I started watching Critical Role in the early months of 2021 and just got inspired and wanted to play D&D again. What Mercer and his crew do is quite simply everything I ever wanted D&D to be, so I went and got some miniatures, a webcam for a battle table, some sound effects, and some music and off we went. And it’s been going great! It’s a hell of a lot of work being a Dungeon Master, but it’s very fulfilling.
I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.
UPDATE THREE: I’ve been making incredible progress toward completing Grant Scotland Six this summer! I think I’ve written more of that book in the past month than I had in the past year. It’s easy to slide into Grant’s head and get his feet moving (although he always complains about that). There’s so much I want to cover in this book that it looks like it will be considerably longer than previous books, but I still want to keep it under 100k words. I’m on track to get the first draft done sometime this fall, but I want to spend extra time revising it, so I’m looking at a release date of March or April next year. I think I’ve stated before that this will be the last Grant Scotland book, so there’s a lot to wrap up, but I like that all of these books are quick reads, so I want to keep it that way. And while it may be the last book in the Adventures of Grant Scotland series, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be the last book I write that takes place in that world… (dramatic eyebrow-raising music swells)
However, that would probably depend on publisher interest. After this book, I will likely no longer be self-publishing. The self-publishing experiment was by no means a complete failure, but from a sheer economics stand-point, it has not proven to be worth the time. I’m glad I did it, for a variety of reasons, but unless the series somehow skyrockets in popularity, it just isn’t worth it for me anymore. I’ve got a budding career writing computer game story/dialog now and I can’t even describe how great it feels to get paid for writing. It’s definitely a dream come true. So, I’ll be focusing on pursuing and expanding that opportunity and at the same time trying to find someone to pay me to write novels.
UPDATE FOUR: The writing for the Jagged Alliance game is going great! There are so many cool and quirky characters, and each one has a distinct speech pattern, motivation, and sense of humor. It’s incredibly enjoyable to write funny and/or interesting lines for them. The release date hasn’t been announced, so I can’t say when it will be available, but I can tell you that it looks good and is very stable and has all the ingredients of a great game – now it just needs time to cook!
In case anyone is curious about how to enter the field of “Game Writing”, I can tell you my own experience is probably typical and also not very helpful. I spent about nine years in computer game development, first as a Quality Assurance Tester and then later as Game Designer and then at the end I was sort of a mix of both. When the Great Recession hit, all that ended, and I resigned myself to the fact that my career as a developer was over. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to make some friends in my time in the industry and when one of them reached out to me many years later to see if I was interested in doing some creative writing for a project he was working on, I got the opportunity to dive right in. So, the only truly helpful tip I can offer you is to try to stay in touch with friends that for one reason or another drift away from you. It’s not just good for emotional health, but it also helps create opportunities to enrich your life in so many ways.
OTHER UPDATES: I’ve been watching some great shows! I want to talk about Stranger Things, Umbrella Academy, The Boys, The MCU… star wars (maybe), but I think I’ve talked enough for one post. I’ll try to post again soon and we can geek out about all that stuff.
Helllloooo, friends! Happy Holidays! Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve last posted, but I’ve been busier than a beaver at a dam-building convention. I mean, a convention comprised entirely of beavers… also building dams. All of them. And there’s some sort of prize involved…
Perhaps I’m overexplaining.
Anyway, been busy. The writing I’ve been doing on the computer game has reached a more intense level as that project reaches late-stage development. It was recently officially announced. Did you see it? It’s a real thing now! Check it out!
Pretty fucking cool, right?!?! I am so thrilled to be a part of this project. The talent and care being poured into this thing is humbling and exciting. I still can’t talk too much about it, but at least now I can finally say it is this thing called Jagged Alliance 3 and that means it is a thing that is awesome and full of fun. If you’re a gamer from the 90’s, you probably have heard of its predecessors. In that case, let me tell you that you should be excited! I played Jagged Alliance 2 and loved it very much and this one is showing every sign it will be carrying everything that was awesome about that one forward and adding much more.
And if you’re not familiar with the Jagged Alliance franchise? Well then, friend, let me ask you something; do you like tactical modern warfare games? Do you like roleplaying games where you can level-up a band of curiously talented miscreants to save (or possibly ruin) the day? Do you like snappy dialog and clever witticisms? DO YOU LIKE THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME?!
Yes? I’ll assume yes. You should check this game out when it is released. When, you ask? Don’t ask me. They don’t tell me these things. They just tell me to write words for make-believe people and I do it, because THAT IS WHAT I DO!
[Pictured: The author pens tales of derring-doo-doos.]
But it’s not all I’ve been doing. I have also been working on Book Six of the Adventures of Grant Scotland. Progress has been slow – sporadic, even. I originally wanted to get this book done this year, but I just couldn’t manage it. I know what I want to do with Grant’s story and every time I find time to write him, the words come fairly easily. It’s finding the time that is a challenge! It’s not just the hours I put in on writing for Jagged Alliance, it’s the full-time job at the pizza shop. I’d love to cut my hours and make more time for writing, but because the health care industry in the good old USA is so fucked up, I have to keep full time employment just to afford to see a doctor or even a dentist.
It’s fucking insane. Let me just throw a downbeat in here for a sec: What the fuck are we even doing here? Why did we ever let it get to this? I understand how it happened, but… why? Why did we let it happen? It’s frustrating. It’s a leg-iron. It’s a cruel system of shackles meant to… to do what, exactly? Why do we punish people who don’t have conventional nine-to-five jobs like this?
Does that seem right to you?
Anyway, it sucks. Sorry. I’m just chafing at the bit. I feel like I’m at a place where my writing is just beginning to take off and I should be ploughing way more time into it than I am, but instead I’m stuck in a pizza shop basement folding pizza boxes or riding around dropping off pies, not because I need the extra money, but because I might have the AUDACITY to get my blood pressure checked or get a fucking cavity filled.
[Pictured: The author manages three work schedules and an appointment calendar.]
My blood pressure is fine, by the way. It certainly seems like it shouldn’t be, right? My stress levels feel like they’re constantly elevated, but I’ve been good about getting exercise and making time for my own writing and not taking this whole life too seriously. Cutting back on the drinking has also helped quite a bit.
Mainly, I’m thankful. Honestly, I am. 2020 and 2021 have been tough years for a lot of people, but for me they’ve been strangely good. When I started seriously writing, one of my goals was to turn my writing into a secondary revenue stream and over the last couple of years it ACTUALLY has! When I started writing Grant Scotland, one of my goals was to get some readers who didn’t know me to ACTUALLY like my books and they do… except the people who keep mistakenly buying my books because they think they are travel guides to Scotland. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who buy books who don’t actually know how to read.
So, I’m thankful. Thank you to everyone who has supported me in all the ways you have. Have a happy and safe holidays and I hope all good things come to you and everyone you love.
So, last time we spoke, I was having a bit of a bout with ennui. Sort of. Not quite. I was suffering from declining interest and enjoyment in the things that normally brought me joy. So, a kind of mild depression, perhaps. Anyway, I’m happy to tell you that I have emerged from that gray place and am having a positively lovely summer. I believe a couple of realizations helped me turn the corner and get my groove back.
“Groovey…” Image credit: Bruce Campbell and Evil Dead.
Now, before I tell you what these realizations were, I want to stress EMPHATICALLY that I do not know the cure for depression. I am NOT prescribing general advice here. This is just something that worked for me, a person who does not suffer from chronic depression but knows and loves several people who do. It is a very real struggle they have to deal with and I would never presume to imagine that what worked for me to chase away a small bout of “the blues” would in any way, shape, or form work for them in their situations.
So, with that disclaimer out of the way, I’ll tell you what helped me in my time of malaise.
First, I realized I missed Donald Trump.
Image credit: Kevin Hart.
What? Where is everyone going? No, no! Wait! I didn’t miss him miss him. I mean to say, I missed the constant barrage of stimuli he provided to my senses every day for the past four years. This is a real thing! You can look it up. Almost every day there would be a story about some ludicrous thing he had done or said. The stimulation to my senses, ranging from bewilderment to abject terror, altered (for a short time, at least) my brain chemistry.
I became used to the anxiety he provoked. I became perhaps a little dependent on the adrenaline rush I would get feeling my rage boil over at how a ridiculous moron like him could have ever been elected president.
And I missed it. I don’t anymore. I don’t think so, anyway. I think making the realization put me in a mental place where I could grapple effectively with the sort of thing I was missing.
Second, I realized that I had been drinking way too much.
No, it’s true! This is another thing that was not at all uncommon during the Trump years, specifically 2020. For me, though, I had been drinking fairly regularly for years before that as well. Nothing that ever got in the way of work or relationships, but it was something I had certainly formed a certain level of dependence on nonetheless. A functioning alcoholic, some might say, but I hate that word. It’s just got so much stigma attached to it.
Anyway, this spring I made the decision to control my drinking. I’m doing pretty well with it. I don’t plan to stop completely. I like drinking. A well-made cocktail or a nice cold beer on a hot day is one of the joys of life for me. I plan on keeping that. But, in order to keep that joy, I have to let go of drinking regularly. And I’ve found I’m able to do that without a problem. I drink only a fraction of what I had been consuming before and I feel much more energetic and even a little less bloated.
But… I’ve found I’ve had to relearn how to enjoy things without drinking. That was the toughest hurdle. And it remains a tough hurdle. It probably always will. But it’s getting a little easier. When I sit down to write or to play a computer game or watch a show, I find I no longer am missing alcohol. Well, not as much as a couple months ago, anyway. And there’s also the realization that by not drinking, the thing I am enjoying will turn into a firm memory for me rather than a fuzzy recollection.
That’s important, y’know? It’s basically all life really is, in my opinion. Every moment you enjoy you only get to hold onto it for a brief second before it turns into a memory. Much better to have those as clear as possible than fuzzy-boozey.
Fuzzy-boozey never quite got the same recognition the other Muppets received.
And one last thing has also helped me turn the corner. I’ve recommitted to my Grant Scotland writing. A few weeks ago, I decided I needed to make time to finish this book this year or it was not… ummm… going to get finished this year. That’s just how these things work. If you don’t have time for something that’s important to you, well… you just have to make the time. It’s not easy. There’s nothing easy about writing, it seems. But if it’s rewarding? Then I think you owe it to yourself to make the time.
I guess I actually am prescribing this one thing as a general one-size-fits-all piece of advice – not just about writing, but about whatever it is that is important to you in your life. If it matters to you and you get fulfillment from it, whatever it is, then you make time for it.
So, I committed myself to at least 2,000 words a week to Grant. That’s a modest and very achievable goal. And, seeing as how the book is already about a third written, it should get me very close to actually finishing it before the New Year. We’ll see. Anyway, forward progress is being made. The first week after I made the commitment, I barely got 1,000 words out. Disappointing, but better than nothing. The next week, 1,200. This week? I’m already at 1,500 and the week’s just started.
I’m feeling good about my chances. And – AND! – as I mentioned in a prior post from last year some time, making time to write goes a long way toward helping me stay mentally healthy, so I got a cool ancillary benefit going on there.
Well, that’s it. Just wanted to let everyone know I’m doing great and making good progress on all sorts of projects…. except hanging the new window shades. I swear, it’s on the to-do list. I’ll get to it.
Hope your summer is going well. Talk to you later.
I swear I’m not depressed, but I have neither been interested in nor greatly enjoyed anything for several weeks. I don’t feel sad or tired or anxious. In fact, I feel pretty good. My energy is good. I’m productive. I’m making plans for the future and I’m goal oriented. I feel… fine.
But at the end of the day, when I’m satisfied I’ve been productive enough and can reward myself with some recreation, I just simply am not interested in anything. I used to play computer games at the end of the day to unwind, but I haven’t found a single title that can hold my attention for more than a half hour before I’m bored out of my mind. Even old favorites seem stale!
It’s like if Joshua tried to get me to play a game right now, I’d get right up to the point where we are about to nuke each other and then just yawn and turn off the computer and say “yeah, just not feeling it.”
Streaming TV shows is a little better, but not by much. Not a lot is asked of me to just sit and watch, so I can tolerate a disinterested viewing of a complete forty or fifty minute episode, but I’m far from compelled to binge. I’ve been re-watching Burn Notice because I missed much of the mid to late seasons, but the predictable plot twists and improbable action scenes I used to enjoy now just seem kind of lame.
I suppose it might have something to do with the fact that I cut way back on my drinking recently, but I’m not sure. I did “Dry January” and that went fine and I didn’t feel any different at all. February and March were pretty wet. April was up and down. May has been predominantly dry. I don’t know. I think about drinking to liven up my mood, except I know exactly how it will work (fine at first, then hazy, then waking up feeling bloated and tired) and I get bored thinking about it.
I don’t know. Maybe I am depressed. Is this what depression is? I feel like if I was depressed, I’d be equally disinterested in work, except I’m not. I’m going full blast on the writing for the computer game and the pizza delivery gig is steady and enjoyable if not exactly interesting. I am even making some progress on finishing the last Grant Scotland novel. Not much, but some.
So, instead of doing something fun, I guess I can use my old recreation time to be more productive. I guess that’s what I’m doing now, writing to you. Not that it isn’t enjoyable writing to you, but… well, I honestly can’t tell anymore.
It’s springtime out there. Weather’s been nice. I’ve been going for walks – walks without a mask! – and that’s been… fine.
You know what I feel like? I feel like the water from the melted ice from an iced coffee. Y’know? That little bit that gathers at the bottom of the cup once you’re done with it? It’s still sort of cold. It’s still sort of coffee-flavored. You may as well drink it, so you do and it’s… fine.
I don’t know. It probably is the booze, right? Or absence thereof.
But I’m also busy! I honestly never have a moment where I have nothing to do. I have the two jobs and the book and a long list of projects of all kinds I need to get to. Every waking moment I feel like I should be doing something. That’s what this post is, by the way. I haven’t posted in a while, so I felt like I should post, even though I am thoroughly not interested. I just also happen to be not interested in anything else, so here we are.
Well, except work. I still seem to be interested in work, but I refuse to go full bore all-work-and-no-play. I’ve heard that can do bad things to writers.
Although he DID keep his word count up, I’ll give him that.
Maybe I need to pick up a new hobby, except that would require me to add it to my already long to-do list. Maybe it’s some sort of vitamin deficiency. I just took a multi-vitamin. I’ll let you know how it goes. I don’t like taking those because they actually end up weakening your immune system if you take too many. Also, they make my pee turn a weird color. I’m not sure what color, because I’m colorblind, but it’s weird. They’re also certifiable choking hazards. Have you seen these things? They’re huge!
Ah, whatever. Get tough, McClure.
Well, it’s been a few minutes. I do feel a bit better, but that could be because there’s a thunderstorm outside. Those are always exciting. They add an instant dose of drama to whatever you’re doing. It’s like having your own personal soundtrack. I always want to clean during a thunderstorm, because it makes me feel like I’m in a scene where I’m trying to get rid of evidence.
That’s a lie. That’s not true at all. I just thought it would be a funny thing to write.
Know what I haven’t done in a while? Listened to music. I mean, I do listen to music while I write, but it’s nearly always soundtracks. I have a whole Pandora station devoted to them. I’m listening right now, in fact. I think it’s something from Star Wars: Force Awakens. Soundtracks are excellent company for writing because they don’t have any lyrics to distract you and are entirely devoted to setting a mood.
But I don’t listen to bands anymore. When I’m in my car, I listen to talk radio. Sometimes sports, sometimes NPR or a podcast. I just feel like if I hear one of my favorite songs even one more time, I’ll hate it and then a whole piece of my past will become tainted. I suppose I could try to listen to new music, but is there anything more pathetic than a forty-seven year old man who has to try to listen to music?
I’m wondering if this is some weird side effect of the vaccine. Perhaps in exchange for becoming immune to a deadly virus I have also somehow become immune to joy. Now, that is a depressing thought. Never mind. Let’s not think about that. I didn’t mean to bring you here to bring you down. Here, look at this:
Awwww… Actually, now that I’ve looked at it for a few seconds, it looks like that puppy has the kitten in a merciless headlock.
Okay. Forget it. I’m going to go to bed now. I’ll let you know how things go with the multi-vitamin.
This Tone of Voice 