Today’s Word Count: 3,879
Total Word Count: 15,588
Words to Go: 34,412

To be bluntly honest, I don’t know where this week went. Monday was spent recovering from Sunday, yesterday was spent promoting the release of F*ck the Patriarchy: Getting Smutty for a Cause (which contains my Paladins of Crystal novella “A Theory of Crystal”) and watching the election returns with bated breath, and today was spent getting an estimate from some pros on repairing the front walk (the short version—yeah, no. We’ll go back out there this weekend or the next and take another crack at it). As my brain hates me and all I knew was that the guy was coming “sometimes around 10 AM” my brain woke me up every hour on the hour last night to make sure I didn’t oversleep.

Thanks, brain.

As a result I’m frigging tired and only made 500 words today. Still making my NaNoWriMo word count but I was hoping to be further along with Crystal Blade by now. But next week I’ll be in Vegas for 20 Books to 50K® 2022, attending a ton of panels on how to improve my indie author business, and I’ll be writing when I’m not actively learning or networking with other attendees so I’ll make up for lost time then.

Today’s Word Count: 3,532
Total Word Count: 11,709
Words to Go: 38,291

Well, that was a weekend and a half. Saturday’s writing session was interrupted by my decision to finally fix my office door. See, the previous owners of this house replaced all the door handles with new brushed nickel ones, but they didn’t chisel out the proper recess for the strike plates (the section that goes on the door frame and covers the hole where the latch bolt goes). They just screwed ’em on and that was good enough.

Except that it meant my office door was getting harder and harder to latch, especially as this house settled over the years. Finally I couldn’t latch the door at all, which meant that the J Crew could come in any time they liked.

So on Saturday I brought up a chisel, a mallet, a drill, and some wood filler and decided to fix the situation. I took off the strike plate after checking to see where I’d need to put it in order to allow the latch bolt to enter, chiseled out a new recess in the door frame and enlarged/lowered the hole for the latch bolt, closed up the old screw holes with filler, marked out where the new screws would go, drilled pilot holes for them, re-installed the strike plate in its new position and screwed it into place.

Et voila, my office door now latches. Even better, I can now lock it, which will allow me to do stuff that I don’t want the cats interfering with.

And then there was Sunday. I got my words in, which is something, but man…

A section of our front walkway is subsiding, forming a tripping risk. Ramón decided that we could fix this ourselves and spent the year collecting bottle jacks and all the equipment we’d need to raise the subsiding slab and put gravel and expanding foam under it.

Sunday was The Day. We spent the entire afternoon excavating holes on either side of the subsiding slab, attaching clamps to it, setting up the bottle jacks, attaching the clamps by chain to a 7’ length of 4×4 wood, putting the 4×4 on the bottle jacks, and raising the slab.

Well, we did raise it, after much sweat, toil, and swearing. Unfortunately we also raised the slab next to it (something that we can’t see is connecting them) so it didn’t made a damn bit of difference. I finally convinced Ramón to let me call the pros and have them come out and fix it. I mean, we already dug the holes—all they have to do is grind off whatever bit of concrete is attaching that one slab to the subsided one, drill holes in the subsiding slab, pump expanding foam in there until the section raises to the proper level, and they’re done. We’ll fill the holes back in.

Ramón muttered that we were getting too old for this shit. He also said, “This looked so simple on YouTube.” I reminded him that everything looks simple on YouTube. And I may have wanted to do a swan dive into a bucket of rum and coke afterwards but restrained myself.

Today’s Word Count: 500
Total Word Count: 8,177
Words to Go: 41,823

Today was a tough one—we had a massive rain system move through the area and I was aching as a result which interfered with my ability to write (I can write when I’m depressed, I can write when I’m sick, I can write when I’m tired, but when my finger joints feel like they’re filled with ground glass I have to back off). Even so, I’m still well over the NaNoWriMo limit for the day and I’ll see if I can make up some of the personal shortfall over the next few days.

The story itself is chugging along nicely—after a fraught “family” dinner at the palace Crystal has been invited by her rival for the throne Veronika to the Harvest Ball, mainly so that she has to sit there and watch Veronika dance with the Buff Lords (because Veronika is incredibly insecure and tends to lash out when she feels threatened). What neither of them know is that an official from Arceneros (aka the continent of Uskela’s Coventry) is about to make a dangerous proposal to Crystal, after which a bunch of rocks are about to start rolling downhill, muwahahahaha.

In between writing I need to prep for 20Books to 50K™ 2022 in Las Vegas. I’ll be selling and signing books at the RAVE book event at Bally’s (soon to be Horseshoe) on the Strip on Friday, November 18th. The event is free to the public and a bunch of major indie authors will be there so if you’re in the area I invite you to stop by and check out our wares.

And now I hear the Elderly Cat yowling from the living room so I’d better see what he needs now.