Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
5 August 6 August 7 August 8 August	Pulling weeds because it was a holiday. Second draft of “Those Whom Ambition Calls” Third draft of “Feel My Pain”	Enough to get overheated and cranky about. 542 typed words (some of which did not want to come out). Removed a couple of paragraphs, to land at 1799 words.	Retro 51 Tornado Pilot Elite Pelikan 140 Sheaffer Snorkel Clipper	Herbin Lie de Thé Quink Black Herbin Vert de Gris Herbin Bleu Nuit

 

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An Unusually Content-packed Progress Report

It’s so colossal, it gets a title!

The first thing I want to do is direct your attention to a Kickstarter, which I will now steal some words from:

2019

The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Mission.

The 40th anniversary of the classic horror film Alien.

One year after the proposal of the US Space Force.

How could we not create a collection of space themed horror?

What We Are Doing

Jason, the Leprechaun, even the Cenobites and the Critters ended up going into space. We decided it was time to give some other monsters that same chance.

Earlier this year we started accepting submissions for an anthology featuring classic monsters with the stories set in space. We have collected 16 stories and one poem that we think you are really going to enjoy.

And by enjoy we mean scare the space suit off of you.

I will declare my interest in this project– one of the sixteen stories contained in the collection is written by me, and I’m both proud of it and delighted at the prospect of its publication. So, If you’re interested in this sort of thing (and what sensible person isn’t?) take a moment to back that Kickstarter.

It’s not just an image, it’s also a link

…and now on with our regularly appearing material (but stay tuned– there’s cats lower down!).

Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
22 July 23 July 24 July 25 July	Second draft of “Those Whom Ambition Calls” A trip to the dump†	1,430 typed words. 70 kilograms, according to the before/after weight of the van.	Sheaffer Snorkel Clipper TWSBI Classic Pilot Elite Retro 51 Tornado	Herbin Bleu Nuit Monteverde Malibu Blue Quink Black Herbin Lie de Thé

†I mentioned at the beginning of the month that we’d had a furniture collapse, and that dump trip was the disposal of the corpse of the old couch/futon object. The replacement is meeting with broad popular acceptance.

Kees is, as ever, mildly smug about his enjoyment of the new couch.

Bram is often tense, as is common in a hemi-demi-feral cat, but even he can relax into the luxury of our gracious new furniture item. That shred of paper near him was brought over by Kees, who is helpful that way.

Hercule, the last of our feline triumvirate, declined to initial the photo release form, but he apparently also thinks it’s nice. Happily, the three humans in the house also find it at least moderately comfortable.

 

Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
22 July 23 July 24 July 25 July	Second draft of “Those Whom Ambition Calls” Third Draft of “Found On Roadside Dead.”	1,746 typed words. Ducks firmly in order… and then I find the place I’d meant to submit closed days earlier than expected. Alas.	Retro 51 Tornado Pelikan 140 Sheaffer Snorkel Clipper TWSBI Classic	Private Reserve Supershow Blue Herbin Vert de Gris Herbin Bleu Nuit Monteverde Malibu Blue

 

 

Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
15 July 16 July 17 July 18 July	First draft of a story for Owl Canyon Press Hackathon 3. … and then we notice a single word in paragraph 20 we’d missed, which makes it necessary to start afresh. Second draft of “Those Whom Ambition Calls”, because that competition story turned slippery.	708 typed words. 251 typed words. 332 typed words.	Sheaffer Snorkel Clipper TWSBI Classic Pilot Elite Pelikan 140	Herbin Bleu Nuit Monteverde Malibu Blue Quink Black Herbin Vert de Gris

I got essentially zero writing done over the vacation, about which I am not very pleased, but the failure was the payment for actually getting something done about the state of the house.

Also, there was this distraction: a couch we bought in 2012 (mentioned in passing here), intended to be more or less disposable in the face of the now-passed incontinent cat Cleo and the ever-expanding menace to durable goods which is my son, collapsed somewhat. It was a cheap item… as couches go… so its failure has always been anticipated. However, it brought with it the unwelcome expense of replacement. We spent someone more on the new one, since the current bunch of cats seem to have a better sense of what litter boxes are for and sonny doesn’t randomly up-end containers of staining foods so much these days.