Three things to make a belated August update:

First, in this latest (but not final) revision of the book, I’ve completely thrown out the denouement and rewritten it from scratch.

It’s longer now, but I’m not too concerned about that. It’s the denouement for an entire series of novels (plus the shorter stuff, too) so I wanted to give it a chance to breathe. If it feels like it’s breathing too much when you finally get a chance to read it, mea culpa.

The next task is to add some chapters from the point of view of the main villain. That’s not really a spoiler, but it is something new and unexpected. And after so much time spent revising, just sitting down to write new text is very satisfying.

Second, I’m a fat guy who has had two incidents of chest pain over the past year, so the doctors wanted me to do an angiogram, with the potential to implant a stent or two if I needed it. For those who don’t recognize the term, it involves sticking a long wire with a camera at the tip into an artery, usually at the wrist but sometimes at the groin, and sliding it all the way up to take photos of collections of plaque that sometimes builds up near the heart.

A good thing: if I ever need to write a scene where an alien worm is crawling through a body, I now have sense memory to draw on.

Another: they didn’t find anything of any significance. There was a little bit of cholesterol buildup, but nothing they felt particularly concerned about. No stents.

Yet another: the nurse told me that I was the easiest patient she had to deal with that day. Now, I realize that it’s not a competition, but if we’re talking about patients who cheerfully go along with whatever the medical staff wants without being too demanding in return, I’m tops.

(When I made that joke to my family, my son laughed and my wife gave me A Look. Her health mantra is “Be demanding.”)

Third, it’s finally official that I have arthritis in my knees.

Fourth, for Tabletop Tuesday, we have just started a campaign of Escape from Dino Island.

I was hoping they would dig it, and everyone seems to have picked up on the tone and the style pretty much right away. The game itself is meant to be a one- or two-shot, but this might run a little extra.

My wife and son may not be avid gamers, but they do like this family tradition and they enjoy playing. My favorite part is when things take a turn they absolutely did not expect. Last session, while they camped inside a crashed helicopter on the beach, one saw a dino run out of the jungle with a long stick in its mouth. They saw it dip the end into the flames and run back in the foliage with a lit torch. There was, maybe, ten seconds of silence as they stared at me, thinking about what that might mean.

Love that. So much fun.

Sadly, it seems that I’m a wimp of a GM. (Or in this case, a “DM” for “Dino-Master”.) I hate injuring my family’s PCs, let alone killing them, and what fun is a Jurassic Park knock off if the dinosaurs aren’t killing people? Next session I’ll have to toughen up.

That’s my belated August update. Thanks to everyone who supports my Patreon, and I’ll try to get September done on time.