Where is everybody? There's no coffee in here!?!?!?

Okay, that looks like coffee beans. Grind em, slap em in the Mr. Coffee, right? Piece of cake!

Saw a great play this weekend - The Wolves - about a girls soccer team. The play was performed outside, on a facsimile of a soccer field. Very creative cool presentation.

Bought a suit too! Talia had so much fun. I'll grudgingly admit I did to. It's for a wedding in July.

Time to write. 113,855 at the beginning of this morning. I'm thinking maybe 6000 more words to finish.

Coffee and a cookie please.

Quote by redwriter

Today is the day for me to remove the dressing over a small lesion I had cut away last week. (Results of survey early July.) But I think I'll leave the removal until tomorrow simply because I'm a coward, and I'm expecting to see the equivalent of a bullet-hole in the centre of my chest,

For a change I'll try the Earl Grey tea and look forward to a munch on one of Susan's delicious cookies.

That sounds a little scary, though I'm sure it won't be. Were it me, the results of my imagination would be way worse than the reality, so taking off the bandage would be a relief.

Busy day yesterday, including a family medical scare, but things seem to be okay today. So while I fell short yesterday, I'll once again reach toward my thousand words today.

Hot and sunny out. Stock market is holding steady. Time to make the coffee and munch on cookies and get to work.

Hey, your coffee is better than the swill I made yesterday.

Dealing a lot of chores today - physical therapy, actual therapy, a tree guy coming to take down broken limbs, and the 1/6 hearings. Plus I gotta get a newsletter out soon. Still, hope to get my thousand.

The stock market is falling like a rock. Yikes. I'm gonna have to go back to work if this keeps up.

14 in a row for the Braves. Double yikes. The Mets got pummeled.

A cup and a cookie please.

Quote by AnnaMayZing

Anyone remember The Partridge Family? They sang some great tunes that went on to become huge hits.

I had a big crush on Laurie Partridge.

Quote by TomEccleston
The Usual Suspects.

Absolutely. (It's where my name came from.)

Also, Cabin in the Woods

I'm the first one in? It's like 10:30!

I can do this. Brew one cup of Keurig to get caffeine levels high enough to brew a full pot. Got it. Fling some of Sara's delish cookies about on doilies. Put out a dish of Necco wafers. We're good.

Braves have 13 wins in a row!!! Congrats, Sara. The NLE is a race again.

At one point I hit 111,111 words yesterday. Right now I'm thinking 4 more chapters which puts me AT LEAST a week out from finishing.

I'll pour myself a cup and munch on a cookie. Enjoy the day folks.

Thanks for the coffee Ape.

Congrats on those 12 wins in a row Sara! The NLE race is heating up (Phillies are rocking now too).

Broke 110k yesterday. Still not done. I may try to figure out EXACTLY how many chapters it'll take to finish before I start today. I may be rushing things, and I want to get it right. Put all the ducks in a row before I pull out the shotgun.

Ugly metaphor. Sorry. I love ducks.

Coffee and cookie please!

Quote by AnnaMayZing

Now that my story is done, a few facts and figures.

3 Books:

The Nurses:

140,543 words

426 pages

42 Chapters.

Kindred Spirits, Distant Hearts:

115,792 words

351 pages

33 Chapters.

The Long Road Home:

132,442 words

401 pages

39 Chapters

Total:

388,777 words

1178 pages

114 Chapters

For a tale that began as a short story of around 5000 words, these figures come as somewhat of a shock. However, I have loved every minute of writing it and would like to thank the many thousands of people who read and enjoyed it. Especially those who left such wonderful comments.

Now it is done, I shall have to get it published. Who knows, that might take another six years! 😳

Dang! I'm not worthy! Congrats on nearly half a million words!

I'm pulling out what little hair I have left trying to get to 110k!

As my daughter would say, I'm "jelly" of your accomplishments!

Quote by elizabethblack

Nats took the whole enchilada in 2019, in my timeline, though perhaps our timelines have diverged in this marvelous, mystical multiverse. What's my name? Am I still in Colorado?

The novel got pretty well savaged, but in a constructive way. It's a first draft, there's a lot wrong with it. I hope to finish this week, though I'm not sure that's gonna happen.

Up early to help Talia take her car to the dealer to fix it. Write and watch the 1/6 hearings, all day long.

A coffee and three sheep cookies please. baa!

Quote by elizabethblack

Hope our great ape can get the title he is searching for. I know he will. Great job moving stove and leaning out window to trim the tree; made me laugh.

And Verbal, I am so sorry you have had two whole losses with the Mets. Breaks my heart. Not.

Didn't the Nationals win the World Series in 2019. The last time the Mets won it all was... checks watch ...the Reagan Administration!!! We deserve a little good luck. It's HARD being a Mets fan.

Same old thing today. I'll break 109k words, and still not be done. Critique group reads the next big chunk this Saturday.

Riveting hearings last night. Not sure they will change anything. But spell-binding stuff.

Coffee and cookies please!

I am tired and irritable, but I will attempt to improve my mood before I begin my day.

Warm and muggy now, and I think that translates to hot and sunny later when the clouds burn off. I've got nothing to do today but write, and with a little luck I can finish the book tomorrow. Monday is more likely, but a man can dream.

Mets have been pummeled two consecutive nights now. Good thing tonight is a night off. Watching the hearings on the Jan 6 insurrection will be a welcome change (that was irony).

Time to write. Thanks for the coffee and cookies!

Sunny and hot. Hopefully thunderstorms in the afternoon. CRAZY storms out on the Eastern plains yesterday, lotsa hail and a couple twisters.

I'm at 106k plus, but am going to rejigger some of yesterday's writing, rather than push out new words. This close to the end, I don't want to overly rush it.

Mets got pummeled last night. Sigh.

Thanks for the coffee, Scott, and the cookies, Sara. Time to get to it.

Thanks for the coffee Scott.

Greetings Myrtle! On other sites I'm known as Ensorceled, so we've met in passing. Nice to see you here.

Broke 105k words yesterday, pushing to get another 1500 in the bank today. I'd love to finish this Damned Thing by Friday. Let's see if the characters cooperate.

Sunny and warm here, with thundershowers later. My favorite kind of day!

Time to get to work. A coffee and a sugar cookie would rock!

Whew! We have returned, sunburned and happy and everything we own covered in sand. A really fun weekend playing in sand and water and sun at the Great Sand Dunes Nat'l Park. It was a yearly family vacation for forever, put aside for a couple years, now recovered. I got married there! One of the most beautiful spots in the world. My world, anyway.

So today I will be going back and forth between writing and knocking sand off of crap in the garage. The end of the novel is close - maybe the end of the week.

Great baseball game last night. The Mets earned a split with the Dodgers and proved they CAN play with the big boys. Meanwhile, Sara's Braves have won 5 straight and are moving up in the NL East.

Congrats on finishing the Tara saga, Scott.

Coffee and a cookie without so much sand in it, please.

Carl! I love Kid Creole! Even saw them in concert in NYC back in the day. Good tune. Thanks Fuzzy.

Another gray overcast day, though it’s pretty warm out. Packing for a mini-trip out to Sand Dune Natl Park with Talia and my daughter and her beau. It was a yearly family trip for a very long time.

Also looking to break 105k words today. And STILL won’t make it to the end. 110k length (for this draft) is looking likely. Cut 20k in the next draft - that won’t be hard, the characters wander around aimlessly for like 100 pages.

Coffee and cookies Would be swell!

Cool moment in the game last night (Elizabeth will appreciate this) - Mets pitcher was pitching to the Nat's Juan Soto, 2-2 count, and had him struck out, but the ump called it a ball, and on the next pitch he walked. Soto shook his head "no" to the pitcher, like "you thought you had me, but you lost me" and beamed this big smile, and the the Mets pitcher responded with a giant grin. It was very cool, that shared smile.

Small moment, but made the game for me.

Writing calls. A coffee and a cookie please!

Cool and overcast here. No Talia Thursday. The cats and my car keys are both gone - I think they stole my car and are hanging out at a cat cafe somewhere, drinking cat coffee.

A got a story coming out today that I am very close to, and I hope I am not being untoward by putting the link here. https://books2read.com/amt-into-the-briny-deep At he time, I thought this was the best thing I'd ever written. I will let you judge for yourself.

Thanks for the coffee, Ape, and the cookies, Sara.

I love to begin the day with a thunderstorm, Carl. Sadly it's sunny and warm here.

Ventured out with my daughter last night for the meteor shower. It was pretty good, I think we saw around 30 between us. Hung out and talked in the dark and watched the sky.

Today I'm taking the dangerous step of stopping work on the novel for a few days, to write a story for an anthology I REALLY want to enter.

Thanks for the coffee Ape, and the cookies Sara.

Onward!

Quote by Mendalla

So as I bring this saga to a close, I find myself realizing how little I thought through the world beyond how sorcery works (and even that kind of got built ad hoc). Tech-wise, we have a blacksmith as a character so presumably sometime in the Iron Age or later in Earth terms. But then again, there must have been smiths making bronze items in the Bronze Age. However, I think Iron Age is about right. The society is fairly decentralized. Tana and her friends live in villages in a river valley. There's mention of a larger community upstream but it never comes into play. There's no sign of governors or other officials, just a reference or two to Lond the smith being a village "headman", which could just mean an elder member of the community who takes leadership when needed. An alliance defeated The Night Lord but who were the allies is unmentioned.

So it is all pretty vague and what I do introduce is purely in the service of the story. For instance, we know there was some kind of ancient history that produced Pras Tola in The Healer's Power but that's about all there is as far as history.

If I was to expand this into a novel or more, then I would have to spend some time to develop these ideas more. But this is likely staying as is (three short stories that I might eventually combine into a novella) so I am not inclined to spend more time on this world for now. But there is a revelation at the end of the final story that could turn into a hook for a sequel (you'll know it when you read it) so who knows?

Interesting stuff.

As a practical matter, I'm finding my world building contradictory in several places, and I'm not even trying to true it now. I'm going to write it down AFTER the first draft, so I have canon to follow for the second draft.

Quote by Mendalla

For others who may be wondering about the meteor storm/shower:

https://starwalk.space/en/news/meteor-storms

Apparently though, it is not a sure thing. It depends on some suppositions about a how a comet broke up in 1995.

Yep. It looks to be all or nothing. If the pieces of comet exited faster than 60 mph, things might get crazy. Otherwise, nada. But it's early, at 11 pm MST, so easy to catch. I read somewhere that between 11:00 and 11:22 the Earth will pass through three separate streams of dust.

I saw one back in 2001 and it was spectacular. A spiritual experience.

Enjoy the weekend, word-heads! Off to do lawn work.

An iced coffee please. And a cookie!

Thanks for the coffee and cookies Sara. Long and rowdy parties are fun!

Red, my back is hurting from dragging broken tree limbs out of the back yard. You have my sympathies.

I'll break 100,000 words today. Kind of an arbitrary accomplishment, in that I'm not done. Still, it feels good.

The weekend is all lawn, all the time. I'll grill salmon and steak on Monday. And remember - Monday night could bring a HUGE meteor shower. Maybe a meteor storm! Go out! Look up!

A coffee and a meteor-shaped cookie please.

Quote by Mendalla
Though the fact that ours was a clear hate crime, more like the Buffalo shootings in that way, kind of ups the ante (the family were Muslims from Pakistan, the driver was a white supremacist piece of ****).

They're all hate crimes. It's all hate.

I'm at 98.5k words, so that is my focus. I gotta do therapy and hit the drugstore, so it will be tight, but I'm so close to typing "The End" I can smell it.

I am trying to nurture hope for American Democracy these days. It ain't easy.

Coffee and a cookie please.

Sad day in Texas.

I'll just sit here and try to write the horror away.

Peace everyone.

Nice to see you writing rather than deleting Scott. And adding to an existing world must be fun.

Happy birthday, Bob Dylan. 81. Jeez.

I blew off physical therapy. Pure laziness. Energy level is low, but I will carry on. Do my thousand words, meet the tree guy to get at the one tree I can't trim. If only there were multiple tins of cookies sitting around I could steal from to generate the necessary sugar high to get my energy levels up. Hmmm.

Hey, I have a thought!

A coffee and ALL THE COOKIES please.

Good Lord, Sara, thanks for the coffee and all the cookies. I will have fifteen snickerdoodles. I will space them out, one every hour, until bedtime.

Cool airplane, Anna May. I like the little toy airfield.

Cleaning up broken limbs today. What a mess. Gonna have to call a tree guy for one of them - wet snow busted off the top of a tree. I'd post a picture if I weren't so lazy.

Other than than, a slight warming trend, 1000 words to write, and short story critique night, so I have to critique 2 stories. Better get to it.

Appreciate the coffee and cookies!

We got a FOOT of snow last night. Several trees in the back yard cracked. We'll have to wait for a thaw to see if any of them were damaged.

And...the Mets are in Denver, and last night got snowed out, so today they are playing A DOUBLE HEADER IN THE SNOW. Should be entertaining at least.

Novel critique got canceled today too. So it's just me and Talia and the cats and the snow. I'm sure we can find something fun to do.

A coffee and a...*OMG A BANDIT JUST CAME AND TOOK ALL THE COOKIES!!!*

Hey Sara, we're physical therapy buddies! I've got another 4 weeks. Yeah, that really sucks about Scherzer. Our pitchers can't stay healthy.

Cold and rainy now, and a frikkin SNOWSTORM on the way (sorry Sara) so I've gotta prepare the garden and shut off the sprinklers. Snow? Isn't in May? checks watch

It a good day to hunker down and write, though, when chores are done.

A coffee and cookie please!

Good morning everyone!

It's No Talia Thursday. The cats seem surprisingly calm. Little do they know (evil laugh). Should hit 94K words today. Like climbing a mountain. Also physical therapy today, also actual therapy today. I like both therapy sessions, luckily.

Mets won last night, and they are playing now, but I'm saving the game for tonight. The evil Yankees are soaring - best team in baseball. Grrr.

A cookie and a coffee please. Time to make the donuts.

Gamera walks into a bar.

“You’re a shell of your former self,” said the bartender.

I’ll be here all week. Top your waitress! Sorry, that’s not very funny, but I am not fully awake yet.

Different day, same stuff on the table: write, walk, eat, baseball. You’d think I’d get bored. I’ve got 10k-ish words to go, I am in high gear. Even the cats have noticed (not really).

Coffee and a cookie please!

I am REwatching True Detective, the HBO show from several years back. It is SO good. Dark dark stuff, with a hint of cosmic horror. What really makes it works is that perfect balance between McConauhey (sp?) and Woody Harrelson. McConauhey is OUT THERE, weird and intense, and without Harrelson grounding it with his regular guy humor, it really would be too much. As is, it’s perfect.

And Alexandra Daddario is celebrity crush-worthy. Hubba Hubba.

It holds up really well.