Yep, still doing thirty minutes a day.

Yep, still listening to Pod is My Copilot while trudging along.

Yep, still entertaining the cats.

Yep, still sweating like Seabiscuit.

Yep, my knees still hurt like a mother.

But. I was able to climb up a ladder today to replace the seasonal decor over the front door without much of a problem (we have a pair of garlands, a front door wreath, and two vases of flowers that get switched out every season. Today I put the Summer flowers up, so the foyer is now a riot of color).

Plus I was able to do two sessions of fifteen minutes each instead of three ten-minute sessions because, well, I wasn’t tired when I hit the first ten minutes so why not just punch out another five minutes? Plus tomorrow I’m going over to my editor’s house to help clean her guest room because her broken ankle requires her to stay off it and not do things like clean her guest room (she has an incoming guest, hence the cleaning), and I’m not dreading this. So it looks like the endurance is starting to come back whether it likes it or not. Now if I could just find a way to get some sleep without wanting to slice out my knees, that would be faboo.

In writing news, I have a draft cover for King of Blades. I’ve wanted to get Matthias on a cover since Book One, and I finally did it, dammit. Mind you, this isn’t the final version — I still need to do some tweaking here and there and smooth his face out just a bit more (not too much, but enough to match the painted style of the other covers in the series), and maybe add a shooting star under the moon because what the hell, why not. Ooh, and birds — birds would also be a good idea.

But at the moment I am very, very happy with this image. As I put it when I posted it on Instagram, “It’s the closest I could get to Iain Glen without actually using a picture of, you know, Iain Glen.” Now I just have to finish the book, and everything is cool.