Vacation Mode

Total words: 0
Manuscript total: 93,742 (yes, that means I’ve made hardly any progress)

Those of you who have sometimes complained that my type-A personality never lets me take a break should be pleased… I’ve done almost nothing productive for a good week now. I’ve barely even opened my daily planner where I set the priorities for the day and tick them off one by one.

I did, however, get tired of being so insanely unproductive that I created a to-do-list and have been, in a very relaxed way, checking items off.

On the Writing Front — Moon & Cord

On the writing front, I have been in a slump around Empress of Dorsa, but the good news is that LT and I have been revisiting our co-written queer YA novel, Moon & Cord. You can read an ancient version of the opening here.

It’s been a full year since we even revised the outline. We set it aside while I was in graduate school, when books were my only source of income and I needed to focus on my own writing projects (i.e., finishing Soldier of Dorsa and getting started on Empress of Dorsa). I promised her we could get back to it as soon as I was gainfully employed. Unfortunately, due to teacher layoffs in the area, I am now gainfully employed while LT is not, but I am still keeping my promise and working on Moon & Cord bit by bit each day.

Short Fiction!

When I started a Patreon page (which you can learn all about on the new Patreon tab on this website), I promised subscribers to write a piece of micro or short fiction just for them each month. I am pleased to say I completed my piece for June and plan on going through a round of revisions based on LT’s feedback today. She made some really good suggestions, and I think it’s going to be a good piece.

I’m excited to see what my Patreon peeps think about it. Since it’s so short, I don’t want to tell you much about it so I’ll just give you this little teaser: It’s a science fiction short set in a near-future dystopia centered around a Latino transman.

And that’s all I’m sayin’. For the rest, you gotta go to Patreon!

A Walk in the Park

Other than slowly checking off items on my to-do list and playing my computer game for way too long each day, I haven’t been doing a whole heckuva lot.

I did make an awesome pot roast in the slow cooker, and I also went to Balboa Park yesterday with LT for lunch. Between coronavirus shutting down most of the museums and shops, the fact that it was a random Thursday afternoon, and park construction shutting down other features, we practically had the place to ourselves.

It was sooooooooo nice. Oh, and it was also nice to have some one-on-one time with LT, sans children, for more or less the first time since the pandemic started.

And to conclude this post, here is a random photo of a jacaranda tree from Balboa Park that you never knew you needed until just now: