Not Dead

Hey everybody, I'm not dead. I didn't mean to worry anyone. Most of last week was pretty awful. The erratic weather and bouncing barometric pressure that came with it turned what should have been a perfectly normal beginning of the week into migraine-palooza. That ran me straight into leaving for the retreat my publisher put together that I think I mentioned a month or so ago.

The retreat was good but very busy. We talked about a lot of things that would be very interesting to other writers and those in publishing, and pretty much nobody else. So, I will spare you the details. However, I am rarely in a building with a dozen other people when it doesn't involve shopping. So, there were lots and lots of new distractions and not much creative work. Over the course of four days, I managed to write exactly one short chapter of the isekai light novel which I'll post shortly.

I spent most of my hideously limited free time trying to work on reviewing copyedits for Volume Five. Why? So they can hurry it off to the proofreader, so that it can come right back to me for another super-fast review, so that it can go right back to them because the narrator is supposed to start recording it very, very soon.

In my defense, I only found out about the scheduling issue very recently. I literally had no idea when the recording was supposed to happen and assumed it wouldn't happen until December or maybe January. So, like the procrastinator that I sometimes am, I didn't prioritize that copyedit review the way I might have with more information. Fun fact: I now know exactly when volume 6 is supposed to start getting recorded to help ensure this problem doesn't repeat itself. Working on that review was what I was doing late into last night after I drove home, and then what I got up early this morning to complete.

However, that should be the last trip/major disruption for a while. I will be bowing out of any Thanksgiving dinners this year courtesy of a fine case of parosmia. It's one of the less famous things that can happen after people get COVID. In short, it distorts your sense of smell, which inevitably distorts your sense of taste. For me, it makes pretty much all meat smell rancid, onions and garlic smell like a chemistry lab, and even coffee smells bad to me (impotently shakes fist at sky and curses the universe). So, intentionally going anywhere that a Thanksgiving dinner is being cooked is off the table for me. It's a crappy life situation, but it makes building a writing schedule more practical. (It's hard to build good habits when you're life is getting disrupted.)

In terms of chapters, there should be a fresh one for Unintended Cultivator Vol. 10 tonight.