I am NOT getting enough sleep. I know this because I decided to pack it in at 10:30 New Year’s Eve, having had roughly 15ml of whisky, and rose at 9:00 the next morning. And then the same for the next two nights. Part of it is the effect of the season on melatonin production, I’m sure, but explaining it doesn’t fix it.
There’s also the regime change happening in the wild and lawless country across our southern border. If you’re reading this in the distant future, run a search for 6 January US Capitol Siege. I don’t imagine you’ll have to specify a year. Between that ongoing blitheration and my province’s thumbless handling of COVID, in both the pre-vaccine and vaccine-newly-made phases, it’s not surprising the slumber is shallow and evasive.
I’ve been mentioning over previous entries that I’m having a bit of trouble with the fiction output, and that’s almost certainly down to all of the above. Apart from going to bed shortly after 8:00 as a new habit (and, ideally, politics at all levels having a sudden, lasting undumbening), I don’t really have a good solution.
My not very good solution is to give next week’s writing periods over to updating my site, as I’ve got some new pens that should be given their place of prominence. My previous approach to updates no longer applies, as the idle time offered by The Regular Job has dwindled to nearly nothing, so this seems a good solution. It’s also going to involve scraping words out of my head, without having to (entirely) invent the world they describe, and hopefully that will prime my pump.
I should, since a year ago I was rattling on about depression, mention that the sleepiness is no more than than. The magic brain pills continue to do their work, and while I may do so with a yawn, I am taking joy from the world. I’m fairly anxious to share last Monday’s pen with the world, because its filling mechanism is ridiculous. I have a pen on the way that entirely ate the payment I got for “Palmer’s Folly” because until I’m getting more than a couple of piece published a year, that money is to allow frivolity in my life.
And that’s it for this week. Nothing spooled up in the film department, but I’m sure my pursuit of frivolity on a tight budget will return that feature to our programming line-up soon.
† I probably should have posted something during the time away, but the very concepts of time and duty lost all meaning in a bubble-fied nuclear family-only Christmas. The effect on my inward state was such that to apologize for the lapse would be to seem ungrateful.
My enjoyment of creepy stuff goes far back into my childhood, and part of it was exposure to Vincent Price. Without anyone prompting me to do so, I picked up an LP of Price reading stories on a trip to the library, and I’ve always remembered it.
Guess what I just found:
What really stuck through the years was the opening line of the penultimate track, “Gobbleknowll”. Listening to it again… man, my parents were not vetting my selections at the library very well. I was no more than seven when I listened to that thing.
An announcement follows this message. I thought I should give it its own space, as it’s kind of momentous (for me; no cancer cures or spotting of onrushing comets).
As I explain over there, I’m squandering my writing time this month on a misappropriation of Inktober– the eagle-eyed here will have seen the notices advancing down the left-hand sidebar. Daily stories, all month long! EVEN WEEKENDS!
And I got so busy at that, I am rather late posting this.
Oh, you know the stereotype; cool, efficient, probably wearing a black turtleneck.
Stereotypes, man. I should be wearing a lot more flannel, according to international concepts of my nation.
Now, the usual Thursday entry, which will display what an atypical week this has been in more ways than one. It’s not just the impending Pelikan Hub that has kept me from my usual industry– there’s been a lot of stupid demands on my time this week, and they rendered me dull or incapable of using my free time as I would wish. This was, by the way, AFTER choices of ink were made– that degree of dull unoriginality happens without any outside influence, and with a huge array of bottles from several brands all laid out in front of me.
Day
What
How Much
Pen
Ink
16 September
17 September
18 September
19 September
First draft of “Whistling Through the Graveyard”.
Third draft of “Disruptions on the Line” (nee “Underground Follies”).
Pelikan Hub is this Friday! As a result, I’m going to clutter my space up with even more free advertising for that company than they’d expect, because if you can’t have a little fun with the efforts to wring money out of you, you’re probably not aware that they’re efforts to wring money out of you.
I will admit, if I lived in Germany, my son would be getting a LOT more of that kind of thing pressed upon him by his easily-led but well-meaning father.
What's up at Ravens March. 
