The Only Reason to Live in Ohio

Cause after I pay off some debts in May, I'll have freed up $450 a month.

And then I'll get something like this.

It must be Spring Fever. I'm dying for my own place, even though Steph and the Old Man are happy to have me another year and staying here another year would make more sense.

We'll see how the job goes and what the bills look like this summer and see what makes the most sense.

But man, I'm itching for my own place.

Still Waiting at the Door

I'm about 2 months behind on my self-imposed deadline for Black Desert.

I was supposed to have a draft by next month, but it looks like it'll be May instead, with heavy revisions and something of a caliber that could be submitted to my editor by September or so (yes, I'm a heavy rewriter. Not just as I go - which is also heavy rewriting - but heavy rewriting after I have the draft. Until I know the final shape of the book, I can't edit it properly. It's complicated. I'll rant about it another time).

In any case, I usually have some trouble in the Dreaded Middle of a book, and tax season and heartbreak didn't exactly help the already muddy middle.

This weekend, I realized my sticking point in the narrative was that point in the book when Nyx knocks on Rhys's door for the first time in six years. And then... I stopped.

I wrote some scenes ahead of that, the scene where she meets Khos and Inaya, some later scenes of violence and destruction and trippy shapeshifting, but it was this point in the story, when she's gotta knock on the door of the guy who turned his back on her to make his own life that stuck me.

I've continued writing around the scene. I just keep staring at it. Tomorrow I'll be writing the thing out in a plain old notebook. Sometimes when I get stuck, taking it to another writing medium helps.

There's more I want to say about this particular sticking point, but I think I'll leave it at that for now.

Tomorrow I get through it, cause I've got two full-time jobs here now, and deadlines, yo.

Oddities of the Midwest

In conversation with somebody here in Dayton, I heard that he'd gone "snowboarding" over the weekend. How odd, I thought. Where the hell does somebody go skiing for a weekend in the middle of Ohio?

You have to understand, I'm from the Pacific Northwest. If we want to go skiing, you know, we drive the two hours to the Mountain. If we want to go to the beach, we drive the two hours to the beach.

This is Dayton, OH. Where the hell do you go skiing?

Well, it turns out, here in Middle America, find a hill and make some snow.

No, seriously.

Um, folks? If you like skiing, move within driving distance of actual mountains. They make snow out here.

They make snow.

I'm sorry, I know I really shouldn't find this shocking, but fake snow on a bumpy hill in the middle of the midwest, and you call that skiing?

No, no people.