Yeah. March did not go as planned. The 40 Mile March turned into … something else.

But it’s spring and hope springs eternal.

Status

The Wizard’s Cat (Book 2 of the Wizard’s Butler)
I didn’t realize that so many people didn’t make the connection between the Cat and the Butler. The book itself needs the last few quarters of the story filled out. A weasely way to say I’ve got a long way to go but I know where I think it might end up. Execution, as always, is the problem.

Everything Else
Nothing else has happened. If it’s not Cat, it’s not happening. I have not abandoned Ishmael or Tanyth or anything. I’ve got some thoughts about where all those characters might go. I’m making a concentrated effort to put my limited brain cells on the Cat.

What Am I Reading?

I finished off the existing volumes of Stephan Morse’s Continue Online series and Nobody103’s Mother of Learning (a 4 volume series at the moment). Lately, I’ve been zipping through Darynda Jones’s Betwixt and Between series. I’m up to book 4 in just a few days. They’re just so much fun, my reading has been on the upswing after the February doldrums.

The basic set up for this midlife magic tale involves a set of chosen ones – women, naturally – whose powers get passed down through the generations from legendary roots. In the first three books, our plucky heroine – aptly named Defiance Dayne – in the aftermath of a marriage gone horribly wrong, inherits a historic Salem manse with a dark past from a woman she’s never heard of.

Secrets abound. Snarky dialog sparks up the pages and kept me smiling as I read. In book 4 the sidekick becomes the main character but the secrets, and the snark, continue. I’m about halfway through and already looking for the next book.

Content warning: There are some steamy bits. Lots of lusty thoughts but a few paragraphs that might not be exactly safe for work.

But don’t take my word for it. Maybe grab a sample of book 1 and see for yourself.

Seriously, Continue Online and Mother of Learning took up all my reading time last month. Some mitigating circumstances? I read only half as much (according to the Kindle app on my phone) for the first three weeks of the month. I blame Enshrouded.

About the Newsletter
I’m still publishing it on the 15th of the month. They’re not all getting delivered but you don’t
need to subscribe to get a mid-month update from me. You can find them archived on my newsletter’s public page.

Looking Forward

A few people have suggested that I put the Cat aside and write something less fraught. I have to admit I’ve considered it more than once but I just can’t gin up any excitement knowing that this story needs to get finished. While some of that impetus comes from knowing so many of you are waiting for it (and have been, literally, for years at this point), most of it comes from me. I need to see this story through for my own sake.

I’m having to relearn so much after The Troubles in 2022. How to eat. How to sleep. How to deal with, well, everything since I didn’t actually die but thought for a good portion of the year I might.

As I told somebody when I was working on editing the Marva Collins series, which I roughed out before I got sick, the story hadn’t changed, but I had.

I’m still – even after all this time – still working through those changes. I’m honestly convinced it will be worth the effort.

And the wait.

Until next month, safe voyage.

N

Not just a metaphor. It’s a goal.

Status

The Wizard’s Cat
Not my best showing. My practice froze with the sub-zero temperatures and snow in the latter half of the month. The last few days have thawed things a bit. We’ll see how well that works as the month unfolds.

Everything Else
I’m not working on anything else except me and the Cat. Ishmael, Tanyth, and everything else has taken a back seat while I spend what little focus and energy I have on getting this book through to the finish line.

What Am I Reading?

This month? Not very much. My recommendation engine is idling at the moment.

I spent the last two weeks working through the first three Mother of Learning titles and enjoyed them very much. Think Groundhog Day meets litRPG where the main character, Zorian, gets to repeat the same month over and over. He and his fellow looper, Zach (yes, there are a lot of Z-names), remember what happened in the previous month but nobody else seems to. Unless it’s the mysterious Red Cape.

Sometimes brutal. Often funny. Really intriguing story of what-if and how does it change you when the only thing you can hold on to is your memory.

I liked it so far, but maybe grab a sample and see for yourself.

Honorable mention for last month: Krista Walsh’s Evensong. An interesting take on a portal fantasy/writer trapped in his own works story. Kind of a nightmare, really. I wasn’t sold on the premise but Walsh made it work. I’ll probably go back for the next in the series.

See all the books I read in February here.

About the Newsletter
I’m still publishing it on the 15th of the month. They’re not all getting delivered but you don’t
need to subscribe to get a mid-month update from me. You can find them archived on my newsletter’s public page.

Looking Forward

That 40 mile March listed above references my goal of walking 40 miles this month. The “Talking On My Morning Walk” portion of my day took a beating this month with some dangerously cold, icy, and snowy weather. I didn’t get anything like a reasonable amount of walking in but the season seems to have turned nicely now. We’ll still get some crappy weather but spring is in the air and I need to get my boots on the sidewalk again. Can I walk 20 out of 31 days? We’ll see.

The bigger picture shows me that when I walk more, I write more. My writing dried up along with the walking last month so maybe walking will help curb my ADHD a bit and get it re-hyperfocused on what really matters.

All I can do is keep trying every day.

Until next month, safe voyage.

-N

My word of the year, Practice, is getting a workout and I think it’s working.

Status

The Wizard’s Cat
I’m not delighted with the amount of progress on the story but the old structures involving the actual writing of it seem to be coming back with (you guessed it) practice. I’m at the 25% point with some momentum starting to build. Fingers crossed that this systematic approach to getting this cat off my desk and onto your readers continues to bear fruit.

Everything Else
Ishmael and company will be back. I don’t know what form that will take. I can easily see a Zoya and Ishmael story line similar to the Nat and Zee days but with a different focus as two captains try to live on the same ship and sleep in the same bed. Natalya has her work cut out for her at the academy and Pip’s new entrepreneurial spirit will keep both of them on their toes.

Tanyth Fairport will be back. Some day. So many threads hang from the end of that last book. Any one of them could lead to a story. I just need the bandwidth to deal with it. No, I haven’t dealt with the audio problems yet.

The sequel to Salt, tentatively titled Iron, is in play. Granted, it feels more like a cat toy that’s been batted under the sofa but it’s there.

Website Changes
I spent part of the month revising the various websites and linking them in. The old “Peer Reviewed” site from 2016-2017 where self published authors reviewed self-published works other than their own has been stripped down to a static site. It’s linked here under Webliography on the main menu. “Solar Clipper Diary” has been shuttered but I brought the pages over here. They’re linked in the sidebar. The “Lammas Wood” blog just went away. It served no purpose beyond giving hackers a target. The revamp had been too long coming and digging into the past had me thinking a lot more about the future.

What Am I Reading?

I’m reading a ton of stuff and most of it pushes me back to the keyboard so I can have that kind of fun with my own stories. I’ve always said, “If I’m not writing, I’m not reading enough.” That idea has come back to me with bells on over the last few weeks.

This month I’m going back to an old colleague from the Podiobook days, Lindsay Buroker, and Star Nomad, book 1 of The Fallen Empire. I’d seen her work over the years, mostly in passing while I was already involved in something else. This time I stopped and gave it a second look.

The plucky captain, Alisa Marchenco, retrieves (okay, steals) her mother’s old freighter out of a boneyard with the help of a rapidly expanding crew of off-beat characters. An abandoned cyborg, a chicken raising stoner, a grillmaster with his own powerarmor, and the most pessimistic engineer who ever spun a spanner. Oh, and an enigmatic holy man with a secret that somebody would happily kill for.

As always, hijinks ensue.

Loved the characters. The plot unfolds like clockwork in one of those fancy Swiss clocks with all the various doors and gears popping open where you least expect them but which make perfect sense when they do. Great set up for a nice long series of 9 books!

But as always, don’t take my word for it. Maybe grab a sample of Star Nomad and see what you think.

Honorable mention for last month, a rather dark space opera, Herald Petrel by Strange Seawolf. I passed on this book at least a dozen times. Looking at it, I thought it was YA or even Middle Grade and gave it a pass on the basis of the product page. Another author recommended it so I gave it a shot and have to say it’s pretty darn good once you get past the cutesy graphics.

See all my reads for January along with my rating.

About the Newsletter
I’m still publishing it on the 15th of the month. They’re not all getting delivered but you don’t
need to subscribe to get a mid-month update from me. You can find them archived on my newsletter’s public page.

Looking Forward

The thing about practice is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to happen. The old habits, the old patterns from BC (Before Cancer) just kept failing the harder I pushed to recover them. For the last four or five months I’ve been slowly coming to grips with the fact that those habits may never come back. The day’s of 10,000 words a day may be gone forever.

Or maybe not.

By focusing on Practice, I’m finding that some of those old techniques still work even if not as well as they once did. It’s probably because I’m – you know – out of practice. I’m rebuilding the mental muscles, and even some physical ones, a little bit more each day. And like any practice, some days go better than others but I keep coming back to it. Trying again. And again.

It’s paying off. My daily word counts are trending upward. The idea that I might have a full draft by the end of February doesn’t feel out of reach. Or I may not. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m going to keep working on my Practice, a little more every day. It feels good.

Almost like magic.

Until next month, safe voyage.

N