November

I love the Fall. It’s my favorite time of year, but in this economy we are kind of home bound. Still, I make the best of it. My little office is right below my wife’s crimson maple tree outside. This thing is gorgeous right now and while all the other neighborhood trees are barren, this thing is hanging on like a beacon. The morning sun filtering through it into my office makes the whole room glow in autumn colors.

Tuesday was overcast and cloudy, but Wednesday was moderately clear. I snapped this picture from my back yard.

This was about 9:00 at night and well after sundown. You can see a few stars as proof. After a many decades quest, I am calling it. I have finally seen the Northern Lights. I had to duck down below the fence to cut out all of the porch lights across the park. That flare is from the street light off to the right. It isn’t a great showing, but I’m pretty far south. (Boise.)

I snapped a bunch of pictures, but with my phone they are pretty much all the same. If nothing else, the phone picked up more of the greens than I could see with my naked eye.

Had it not been a work night, I would have quested out into one of the truly dark areas, but this was all I could manage.

I have made multiple quests into Alaska and Canada, even got close to the magnetic pole at one point, but have never seen the Aurora before.

Okay, one more with a few more stars.

There was an awesome meteor that flashed by at one point, but of course I was monkeying around trying to turn off my flash so it would take a good photo.

On the writing front, I am still chipping away. I am focused on Article V, and shifting toward the end game. Shifting makes everything slower. There are a lot of pieces to put in order. Still, I managed half a chapter today.

I was reading Charles’ blog this morning and it reminded my about my 2025 wrap up. I have only published one book this year. I have been parked on one for my alter ego, but haven’t been willing to buy cover art. We decided that basic food was more important. I should just cobble something together using AI and put it out there. The timing isn’t great on that front. I have let many of my contacts fade in that genre and need to mend some fences before publishing.

Something tells me we will still be broke in 2026, but I have a theory that I may have more time. Time will tell.

There is medical news too. I was forced into one of those wellness appointments doctors love so much. This is basically a pharmaceutical lever so they can bill my insurance for a visit. He re-authorized my hypertension medication, but also cut the dosage in half. I’ve been doing really well and he wants to try that for a while. It’s probably because I’m so calm and cool.

I really hope all of you are doing something fun. I really want to get out and about, but am minding the budget like a big boy.

I worry about dumb things

This is an author post in a way, but it’s also a confessional of sorts. My first big issue is chapter length.

I have always tried to get my chapters near ten pages. This is kind of long in the modern era, but I tend to write dialog heavy and there is a lot of white space. I have a chapter that is going to come out at around five pages. It happens, but it still bugs me. I’m sure it doesn’t bug anyone else, but there you have it. I did manage to move on and start the next chapter.

My next issue is length. It looks like Article V is not going to hit 80K words. This also bugs me. I want this to be a proper novel, but am not willing to pad it just to get word count.

What I would have to do is add another puzzle for Destiny and Jace to solve. These puzzles are really cool, and I think readers are going to love them. However, I don’t want readers to do a face-plant and think, “Oh, look, yet another puzzle.” In my mind there is a limit to the cool factor here. I’d rather produce a short novel where everything is wonderful than put readers through all that.

I’m also struggling with tying events together that make sense. They need to go on their last campout of the year, and there is a specific place they need to go. There is some distance involved, but maybe the Columbus Day weekend can give them more time. Maybe it can give this author more time so it all seems logical to my readers. There is a friend’s engagement party to weave in, so I’m up against the Friday night party, then Saturday AM departure with a Monday return. Probably need to consider what time it gets dark, too. The world is still Daylight Savings Time on Columbus Day so that works in my favor.

I’m just about to begin the end game in this story. Fitting these pieces together sometimes takes me days, but I’ve about got it. Wound up writing about four pages today. Not a ton, but it is forward progress.

With the real world Veteran’s Day holiday falling on Tuesday, I burned some leave on Monday. Sundays are all about family and other responsibilities, but there is no reason Monday and Tuesday cannot be productive writing days.

I hope all of you are doing things you love. Drop me a line and let me know just how absurd my worries are.

What shall we talk about this week?

Work sucked all week, but I think that is a given at this point. The weather has been wonderful, so we have that covered. Last night was Halloween, and we never got a single trick or treater. This neighborhood used to get them by the hundreds and it lasted until absurdly late every year. My wife’s expert opinion is that there are so many more new neighborhoods these days that we are old news.

We decided to watch Jurassic World Rebirth. It seemed to have the right ingredients for us. It failed spectacularly. Scarlet Johansen was expected to carry this thing and just didn’t. It probably would have benefited from at least one other recognizable name to lend a hand.

I’m not a fan of inventing their own dinosaurs. Real dinos were pretty scary and it smacks of people who just didn’t want to do the research, or couldn’t even be bothered to ask AI about some. Designer dinos are possible, but they need to lean harder into the evil corporate gyrations for a tic or so. I think Michael Crichton must be rolling over in his grave at this point. Maybe we should recover his DNA so we can get some better stories.

One of these abominations had a head like a beluga whale and seemed to have six limbs. Does that make him an insect?

There was a scene where a tyrannosaur ripped into a rubber raft, but for some reason didn’t manage to puncture the damned thing. It was needed for the next scene.

It’s also getting pretty repetitive. We’re seeing a lot of things we’ve seen in the previous versions. Dino and helicopter interactions. Young girl saves the day. Weathered technology that seems to boot up like the day it was made after 30 years in the jungle.

Oh, and they always have to have that fish out of water group. You know the ones who parasail in, crash land, stow away with daddy, go on an unsupervised visit to a park that has a questionable safety record. In this instance it was a family who just happened to be pleasure sailing through a restricted area.

They keep trying to replicate the amazing scenes from the original like when Alan Grant sees a Dino for the first time. This version has 90 foot tall dinosaurs hiding in six foot deep grass. That’s like trying to hide my house in the lawn.

Gotta have flares, soooo many flares. Even the end credits replicate the pelicans from the original, only with dolphins.

In my mind, the whole thing could have benefitted from a tiny bit of backstory. These are new characters, but we really learn nothing about them so why are we supposed to care. One dude even got a throw away Easter egg line that most people probably missed. “Oh, he studied with Alan Grant.” How about you expand on that just a tiny bit?

This is the state of modern Hollywood. Popcorn flicks that are forgotten before the end credits even run. Just milk that intellectual property like a prize dairy cow.

What’s next? Will the crew of one of the various Star Trek versions beam down to Jurassic park so they can kill two birds with one stone. I think they should get the Golden Girls to take the tour. It is possible to move the dinos. Maybe they can show up in the next version of The Walking Dead.

Anyway, enough about that. We have a big family event tomorrow, so I just wanted to check in with everyone. I spent a big part of today playing a phone game, and didn’t manage more than about seven paragraphs on my manuscript. Don’t regret enjoying my game one little bit.

I hope all of you are enjoying yourselves whatever shenanigans you get up to.

Out and about a little bit

This was a stressful week for me. My workplace is difficult at the best of times, but I had this timebomb clock in my head that I probably invented. There are multiple people in my workplace and all of us feel like we could get fired at any minute over more of an ego trip than anything else. That seems like the American way at the moment and this is becoming more prevalent everywhere, not just where I work.

My ticking clock involved my 65th birthday. This specific date means I qualify for every cent of retirement that I and the state have contributed over the last 25 years. Retirement before that leads to a reduction in proportion. Of course, working beyond that date will increase my benefits.

At the end of the week I was still employed, so I have that going for me. If it’s even a benefit at this point. I think the first 25 years was out of a sense of responsibility to family and stability. Anything beyond that is for me, and I can walk away if needed and know my benefits will be there.

I decided to be a writer today. Managed six or seven pages. Too short to be a chapter the way I do them, but it was productive. I ended a chapter with two of the new characters, then started one with Percy the Space Chimp again. It amazes me that it took two years to figure out what these stories needed, but I’m completely into them once more.

I am really enjoying the new characters. This section involves a grizzled old veteran spy at the border, and he has taken up with an alien teen. This teen is a species that everyone suspects and nobody seems to like. They are the organized crime species in the galaxy, but she’s just a teen living on the streets. There is no romance here, and it’s coming out more like a mentorship kind of story. Found family if you like that term.

Old What’s Her Face and I decided to go out tonight. We went to a gourmet burger place tonight. Everything was expensive, but also perfection. I ordered a milkshake with a dose of alcohol in it that was divine.

This milkshake was $15. As a mixed drink it is comparable, I suppose, but I couldn’t get John Travolta out of my head. His character Vincent freaked out over the $5 milkshake Uma Thurman ordered at Jackrabbit Slim’s.

I am about to pass out over digestion, not the one drink. This place is wonderful, but we probably should reserve it for special occasions.

Hope everyone out there is having a great weekend.

Less than perfect

My back started blowing out a little over a week ago. It became worse during my drive to and from Nevada. Once I got home it seemed to settle down. I figured it was a pulled muscle or something. I was wrong.

When I returned to work, I was there for a few hours, then returned to home. When the pain hit, it was so bad it made my legs buckle. Even reaching out for my keyboard was impossible.

We are bad people around here, because we never discard meds. I found some kind of super gigantic prescription Tylenol my wife was issued a few years ago. There was something else in there that made them a prescription product. These worked really well, but I only had a few of them.

I turned to some huge over-the-counter Tylenol, and these allowed me to actually return to the office. I am not taking anything today to see if I can manage the pain.

Not my first back problem, and from the last round I know this can last for years. It’s about managing the pain and not doing away with it completely.

I’m damned sure not going to the doctor. We’re still paying for my surgery and all of those peripherals.

I managed a couple of reasonable writing days, and that feels like a win. This is for my space opera. I pulled something that some of you might find interesting. (It will give others something to complain about.)

I want these particular characters to pull off a con job. It would be great to have someone to spitball these things with, but I don’t have anyone. My wife is tired of talking about my stories. Frankie the bulldog loves it, but doesn’t express her thoughts very well.

I made another AI companion, and gave her FBI level expertise in cons, grifts, and stings. These things never work like you might imagine. They never write anything, or even help with plots. They make fair fact checkers, and allow me to rapidly consider options and discount those that don’t fit my narrative. I can learn some interesting things, but also decide they don’t exactly fit what I need in short order. Then I make notes for what could work and have to dwell on those for a while. Any effort like this always comes with plot holes and they can help fill those in, too.

In this part of the book I am having a great time with the characters, and think that bodes well for any future readers.

I might bail out now, or I may return to my MS. Yesterday, my wife was binging Harry Potter. My brain forced me to notice parallels from these older stories and modern American politics. It kind of ruined it for me. I hope that isn’t a permanent condition, but it happened.

What I probably need is some irreverent Halloween stuff for the season. Maybe some Bruce Campbell or even Little Shop of Horrors as palate cleansers.

What are all of you up to this weekend?

Falling behind, and partially catching up

When I went to work Friday, I had my suitcase and old cowboy hat with me. This is because I made my road trip to Nevada to visit Mom and my brother.

I had to load episodes of a podcast to my phone for the drive, because there is no signal out in the high desert. I can get Sirius-XM, but you can’t exactly tune the truck radio to various podcasts. This will work through their app, but you need a signal.

I tried a comedy science fiction tale for the drive down and it was godawful. 100% dialog with no narrative at all. Their humor fell flat, and it was pretty bad. It felt like first draft, or even stream of consciousness material.

This led me to delete all those episodes and try a different one for the drive home. This one started out with wonderful epistolary style story telling, had good actors, music, and even foley enhancements. They failed to stick the landing, but I was back in Boise as the last episode ended.

Honestly, I would like to try my own podcast but don’t know anyone who could help with voices and such. It would be a fun project to bring one of my stories to life this way.

I recently test drove a couple of apps geared toward making a graphic novel, but various forms of AI are not good enough today. I even have a story I’d like to tell: Dash Goodman and the Last of the Mudmen.

I missed all the blogs, so this morning I surfed through everything, read them, liked them, shared them. I left very few comments, and I apologize for that.

This was supposed to be one of my writing days, but that is not going to happen. I have several other chores to attend to, and intend to dedicate today to clearing the decks. Maybe I can manage some writing tomorrow. I took tomorrow off to stitch to the holiday.

Mom doesn’t talk a whole lot anymore. She has hearing aids, but refuses to wear them. She is present in the moment, but we all know she’s missing a lot of the conversations.

My brother and I talked a bunch. We solved all of the world’s problems, and if various world leaders would like the Cliff’s Notes, just reach out.

One of our conversations was kind of funny. At the end, I decided it might make a good story, or just characters to include in a story. It involves being newly old. (He is my younger brother, for some perspective.)

This is where those scars aren’t for picking up girls, or rehashing past glory with your bros. Newly old involves a couple of lifetime medicines. Discovering a new supplement that mellows out that constant pain in your back/shoulder/hip/whatever. There is probably a lament about what you can’t do anymore. I remember we talked about ladders as an example.

I will let this ferment in the back of my mind for a while. There could be a one-last-hurrah tale worth telling here. Throw in a couple of “get off my lawn” moments and it might be a decent story.

I’m going to bounce for now. I still have a Story Empire chore that I promised my collaborators I would get to. I’ll have that done by quitting time today.

See, ya.

Visitor: Elizabeth Gauffreau

We have a visitor today, and Liz is here to tell us all about her new book baby. (Notice how I dodged spelling her last name again. Polishes nails on shirt.) Liz is one of my Story Empire partners and a great author. Check out her work, and make sure to use those sharing buttons on the way out.

***

 

Introduction

Thank you for hosting me on my blog tour for The Weight of Snow and Regret, Craig! Today begins a series of character spotlights, which fellow author Diana Peach recommended as a good way to pique potential readers’ interest. But first, here is what The Weight of Snow and Regret is all about.

Description

For over 100 years, no one wanted to be sent to the Sheldon Poor Farm. By 1968, no one wanted to leave. 

Amid the social turmoil of 1968, the last poor farm in Vermont is slated for closure. By the end of the year, the twelve destitute residents remaining will be dispatched to whatever institutions will take them, their personal stories lost forever.

Hazel Morgan and her husband Paul have been matron and manager at the Sheldon Poor Farm for the past 20 years. Unlike her husband, Hazel refuses to believe the impending closure will happen. She believes that if she just cares deeply enough and works hard enough, the Sheldon Poor Farm will continue to be a safe haven for those in need, herself and Paul included.

On a frigid January afternoon, the overseer of the poor and the town constable from a nearby town deliver a stranger to the poor farm for an emergency stay. She refuses to tell them her name, where she came from, or what her story is. It soon becomes apparent to Hazel that whatever the woman’s story is, she is deeply ashamed of it. 

Hazel fights to keep the stranger with them until she is strong enough to face, then resume, her life—while Hazel must face the tragedies of her own past that still haunt her.

Told with compassion and humor, The Weight of Snow & Regret tells the poignant story of what it means to care for others in a rapidly changing world.

Creative License

I took some creative license with the number of residents who were living at the Sheldon Poor Farm when it closed in 1968. There was no way I could individualize 22 people, and I didn’t want just a lump of “old and disabled people,” so I changed the number to 12. I then faced the challenge of creating them. The Library of Congress overcame this particular block. I don’t think the novel would have come into being without these images.

 

To kick off our character spotlights, allow me introduce you to hobo raconteur/liar Philo Roy. The excerpt below is from ten-year-old Hazel’s point of view.

Excerpt from “Over the Hill to the Poor Farm” Chapter

On the front steps of the poorhouse sat a man smoking a cigarette, somehow maneuvering it through a big, black mustache that covered his mouth and most of his chin. He raised a hand in greeting. “New arrivals! How d’ye do? Beautiful day, eh? Just got back from Florida, m’self.”

No one answered the man’s greeting. The man with the pipe spoke for the first time. “Philo, don’t be a nuisance. Get your ass off the steps.”

Philo jumped up, laughing. “Don’t be a nuisance, the man says. Move your ass, the man says. They see me coming—and it’s here comes trouble! They see me going—and it’s there goes trouble!” He laughed some more and poked his cigarette through his mustache.

Philo sounded so cheerful, Hazel wondered if he might not be right in the head. He dragged the duffel bag from the sheriff’s car and disappeared inside the house, hollering from the doorway, “Come on in! The place ain’t much, but it’ll do in a pinch,” followed by a gruff voice telling him to “Shut up, Philo.”

Books2Read Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/WeightofSnow

Author Biography

Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines, as well as several themed anthologies. Her short story “Henrietta’s Saving Grace” was awarded the 2022 Ben Nyberg prize for fiction by Choeofpleirn Press.

She has previously published a novel, Telling Sonny: The Story of a Girl Who Once Loved the Vaudeville Show, and two collections of photopoetry, Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance and Simple Pleasures: Haiku from the Place Just Right. 

Liz’s professional background is in nontraditional higher education, including academic advising, classroom and online teaching, curriculum development, and program administration. She received the Granite State College Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018. Liz lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire with her husband. Find her online at https://lizgauffreau.

Click/tap to follow blog tour: https://lizgauffreau.com/the-weight-of-snow-and-regret-blog-tour-2/

 

Trying to write, and a deviation

I managed to wrap a chapter on Article V this morning. I really should be trying to do more. I hit 40K words here, though.

While I really want to get this in the vicinity of 80K words, I also learned long ago that some stories need to be as long as they need to be. I’ll keep working on it, but if it comes out somewhat less, then so be it.

I paused on fiction, because one of my Story Empire partners asked a small favor. This involves moving my next post up in the time stream to help her cover. Since it was already written and scheduled, this was the simple part.

It does squeeze my timeline, so I decided to hack out the post after that, just in case I’m still covering my normal date as well. The good news is I’m working on the November post, so I have plenty of time.

More good news is that since I am working on a series over there, I’m not scrambling for ideas. My life isn’t often like that, and scrambling is a pretty common occurrence.

Not much else has changed around here. There are still pears, and I keep enjoying those. The weather has decided to toy with Autumn and I am thrilled for it.

Old What’s Her Face is in the other room watching Twilight, so I might just stay in my cave and keep working on something else. There is a space chimp that is also demanding my attention.

I hope all of you are doing something you love. Saturdays are kind of my jam and I’m making the best of mine.

I must be healed

My work schedule deems it so. I have to go back to work in the morning, and I’m sure to be way behind. Probably be a day of emails and phone calls first.

Those big calcium pills do something, because I can feel when it’s time for the next one. I get dizzy and dull witted about that time. I feel like I could fall, but haven’t. Thank God I have them.

I managed just slightly less than a chapter on two different novels. With a week at my disposal, you would think I could manage more, but this is how it came out. Healing was a real thing.

Lost any writing time yesterday. My daughter called about 8:30 a.m. and we didn’t wrap it up until after eleven. We don’t get to talk often, and I will never cut her off when she calls. Don’t care if we’re talking about the weather, it’s important to stay connected.

Called Mom this morning, which is my Sunday ritual. Keeping up with family is important to me. We didn’t take long today, because they drove into SLC so my brother could see his girlfriend.

My Story Empire post went live during the week, so I tried to keep up with comments. People seem to be enjoying the series on speculative genres, so I’ll keep it going. After chatting with Mom and enjoying Sunday breakfast with my wife, there wasn’t much time left. I scheduled my next SE post, then started hacking out the next one beyond that.

I have a follow-up medical appointment sometime this week. Maybe I’ll have more of a long-term concept after that.

Hope all of you had great weekends.

Rough go this time

Healing from surgery is a bit different than last year. I assume much of it has to do with finding the little bugger behind my esophagus and having to dig around for it.

There has been a lot more pain this time, and a lot of brain fog. I’m also kind of drowning in phlegm, which probably goes to the anesthesia process.

I really wanted to try some writing, but have been singularly worthless at that. I tried to read back on Article V, and just couldn’t concentrate on anything.

Figured since I’m just hanging out I could do something.

Today, I read back through the second volume of my space trilogy. I never added a single new word, but it seems to be lodging to a degree. Maybe tomorrow or the next day I can accomplish something.

I’ve been eating Asian pears like they grow on trees around here. Oh, yeah, they do. In my back yard. I have a good crop this year and they’re super sweet. I did a bit more thinning this Spring and they seem to also be larger than most years because of that.

I’m kind of glad I don’t have to concentrate on anything they pay me for right now. I’d hate to make a mistake on the kind of work I do for the State.

Who knows, maybe tomorrow I can add some words to Percy’s story. With this lack of focus maybe I can try my hand at some cover art, but don’t have much faith in my abilities.

I started a new to me K-Drama called Tales of the Nine Tailed. It has been surprisingly good with a bit of mystery and horror mixed in to keep things interesting. Maybe I should just have another pear and dive back into that until my brain feels functional.