Still Alive and Well

Aug 25, 2024 | Sugar, Ah Honey Honey, Typosphere, Writing

I know, I know, it has been a while.

This time of year I like to be harvesting fruit from the garden and preparing to make up batches of plum jam or damson jam. Not this year. The weather has been dull since spring and the various plum varieties in the garden have not done well. We got fruit from the greengage but only about half the quantity of last year. The apples look to be doing well, but the fruit is notably smaller than in previous years.

I’ve spent a lot of time writing. I’ve passed the 100,000 word mark in the stories that will form the sequel, of sorts, to the stories in Coyote in the Corner. I reckon I’ll end up around 110-115,000 and will then cut that down when revising. With a fair wind, I’ll publish them some time in the first half of 2025, but there are a lot of stages to go through before that, notably getting feedback on the drafts once they’re ready to go out. Meantime my book sales have flatlined.

Once I am ready to start revising, I’ll also pick up activity around the next book, a novel.

The most recent two stories I’ve written had their first drafts written entirely on typewriter before I revised and typed them into the laptop. The process came easily and I’m considering drafting the next novel entirely on a typewriter on a chapter by chapter basis. The thing about a typewriter is that there are no distractions.

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Meantime, I’ve had my annual blood tests checking up on the status of my t-2 diabetes. I’m happy to say that I remain in remission despite relaxing the strict diet I put myself on to get into remission in the first place (nothing wild, just not quite so strict). For anybody interested, my HbA1c remains in the low to mid 30s (around 5.3%). That counts as ‘tight glycaemic control’. I’d like to say I’m going to the gym to celebrate but I have a filthy cold and am not going anywhere.