Okay.

So.

I need to update everyone on where things stand for me, why I have made almost no progress on the new novel in the past month, and how things are looking for the future. 

What I don’t want to do is go into any real depths about my wife or what she’s going through, except to say this:

On Oct 21st, my wife was taken by ambulance to the Harbourview Medical Center Emergency Room.

The only thing I want to say about the incident that put her in that ambulance is that the street infrastructure in the United States is a travesty.

However, i have been running around like a chicken with his head cut off ever since. I spent several days bussing back and forth to the hospital while her injuries were assessed and her surgery prepped. I helped her get home and get set up here. I make sure she gets around okay. There are meals to be made and cleaning to do, and she is working to get to a place where she can do more things on her own, but that time isn’t soon.

I’m lucky to have my son here to help. Very lucky. Still, my own health is not exactly fantastic. I am fucking exhausted and I hurt most of the day. I do my best to keep my spirits up for her sake, but I barely have the energy for reading or watching movies lately.

Weirdly, doom-scrolling seems to be the way I reset when my body and mind feel overdone. That can’t be healthy, but it can’t be denied, either.

Which is my way of saying that I’m not making very much progress on the final book in the Twenty Palaces series. Some, but not a lot

Turns out that it’s hard to focus when I’m sitting on the couch, thinking how close I came to becoming a widower. 

In truth, I’m lucky. Her injuries are bad but they could be worse. Her attitude is ferocious and she is determined to recover. She’s knowledgable about anatomy/muscle function and is taking her rehab seriously. Her PT and doctors have to reign her in when what she’d love to be doing is keep pushing pushing pushing her range of motion, balance, and muscle redevelopment. She’s going to work hard and I’m going to help her.

But that means I skipped this year’s post about great horror movies I watched at Halloweentime. I just haven’t had the heart to watch horror. I’m barely making any headway in the book I’m reading. I don’t sleep well. My legs ache all the time. And the woman I love has all those same things going on and more, so it’s on me to make things better for her, if I can.

To wrap up, my wife has started cheering for me when I take time to work. And I must work, desperately. She’s been the majority breadwinner in our home since the pandemic hit, and while we still have a little bit of the money from that long ago advance for Child of Fire, honestly, this looks like trouble. 

Real trouble. 

Whle we’re not at the point where we’re desperate for a way to cover this month’s rent, that time might be coming. So, if you have ever enjoyed my work, please consider joining my Patreon, or maybe buying a few copies of my books to give away. 

If you can’t do that, placing a request with your library system to carry my work would be greatly appreciated. So is simply posting a review of a book you liked on an online bookstore.

Things are getting back to normal, slowly, and I expect to steal a long block of time to work on that final Ray Lilly book starting Friday, but I do need a bit of help to get through, if you can.

Okay. I need to go back to the kitchen and work on tomorrow’s (much reduced) Turkey Day celebration. And even though we’ll be doing with less this year, I have so much more to be grateful for than I ever have. 

Thanks for reading this far, and thanks for your help, if you can provide it.