Spring Loaded!
May is nearly over and this is only my third blog post of the month. I’m not sure where the time is going, only that it’s passing with frightening speed. The past four weeks have handed me healthy portions of success and failure. I’ll begin with the latter. A network switch upgrade at work—that had been postponed three times for reasons beyond my control—was finally scheduled for Sunday, May 20, but came to a screeching halt when we discovered a problem with fiber cabling. We’re having that problem corrected now and will reschedule the upgrade for another Sunday in June or July.
Just before Memorial Day, I received notice that a short story I’d submitted to a contest had been rejected. Such is the writing life. I took Honorable Mention in this same contest in 2017. I was disappointed, but that didn’t linger very long because my local writers group is preparing to publish their next anthology in 2019 with the theme of Rewriting the Past. This story happens to fit that theme. In fact, I have two stories that deal with altering the recent past in some way. Hopefully, one of them will be accepted.
On a brighter note, I managed to add about 4,000 words and two chapters to my SF novel-in-progress during the month. Over Memorial Day weekend, I also recorded my second Kickstarter video since April. This one was for the third volume of the Middle of Eternity speculative fiction anthology series that I created and edited for Firebringer Press. It will be called Meanwhile in the Middle of Eternity and will probably see publication in early 2019. I’ve talked about this series extensively in previous blog posts so I won’t keep blabbing about it here. If you’re interested, you can check out the first two volumes on Amazon or Goodreads by clicking on the titles here: Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity and Elsewhere in the Middle of Eternity.
The previous Kickstarter video I recorded in April was for another upcoming book that I’ve also discussed here before. This will be a double-novella that will combine a vampire story called Freedom’s Blood by Steven H. Wilson and my paranormal mystery, Like Mother, Like Daughters, in the format of the old ACE Doubles (read one story, flip the book over to read the other). I hope to see that book released this fall.
I also managed to submit a supernatural tale to an open call for an anthology titled Beach Pulp, to be published by Delaware-based Cat and Mouse Press later this year or early next. I worked with Cat and Mouse previously when my short story, “Tower Sixteen” won second place in their 2016 contest and was published in the anthology Beach Nights.
Lastly, I attended a number of training sessions this spring as a volunteer for the Lehigh County Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). These sessions included CPR/First Aid, Missing Person Search and Rescue, Fire Suppression and sizing up a hazardous scene, Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment (START), and leveraging and cribbing to extract a victim from beneath large debris. Learning new skills, making new friends, and accumulating helpful new emergency gear from flashlights and first-aid kits to tools and tourniquets.
Add to the above yard work, spring cleaning, and minor home improvements and it’s no wonder that time flew by. I hope to get out on the water again with rod and reel come June. I haven’t been fishing since mid-April and that’s a problem for me!
