Just some highlights

I did fly yesterday. Unfortunately, I can't say too much about it due to contractual obligations... also known as somebody paid for that one. It will be in an upcoming issue of the Charleston Gazette. I'll mention when.

The only thing I can write here that won't appear in print later are some of thing I learned things that weren't unintended. There were 11 people on this particular junket. We all stayed to our own kind. The writers hung out. The lawyers hung out. The airline people hung out. It was interesting to observe how the social cliques formed and how people mingled between the various groups.

I was fascinated, as well, by the natural way everyone recreates themselves new amongst strangers. You don't even have to lie, simply edit, and the shape of your life takes a new form. Good fiction requires good editing and the improved story is always more exciting, more dynamic and less complicated than the bloated, confusing original.

Coming home can be hard.

The radio show is underway. I am currently digging through my old contacts for guests. Sending out e-mails, etc... etc... I hope to start recording shows within two weeks. Still no t-shirt.

I have figured out my next book to work on. Got the beginning worked out, know where I want it to go sort of and even know how I want it to end. How does a pair of people conned into performing in live sex shows seeking revenge on the conman sound? Yeah, but what about if the conman is in jail? What if the conman is the brother for one of the conned?

The other (even mostly completed ideas) are just going to have to wait until I have the time to go that far down. I just don't have the emotional reserves to feel some of the things I' d have to write those stories right now. That sounds suspiciously "artsy" on my part, but it just feels bad writing those other stories right now. So, I'll wait a while longer.

I gave some useless advice to a guy who recently learned his son is autistic. He wanted to know about working longer hours to help with costs and not so much about coping. He seems to have the coping part in hand. I'm always trying to cope. I fight with it and most days I feel like a rock battered by unrelenting waves.

I let the thing I wanted to talk about at the time color what he came for. I didn't give him the answer he came for, and he deserved it.

The honest answer is this... working long hours isn't difficult. The trick is to keep your head down and push through it. Keep a clear idea of why you're doing it. It ain't for fun. It ain't because you like some aspect about it. It's for the money.

If I don't work extra, bad things happen. The refrigerator empties out. There's no milk, no bread, no beans and never mind the other stuff. The electric company will shut off the juice. The finance company will repossess the car. It's only about survival. The joke is putting in 80 or 100 hours a week is really just trading one kind of survival for another. You give up a lot. You miss out on things that happen in the family. You shave years off your life and the quality of your own life goes down dramatically. It's thankless, too. Mostly, you will be blamed for not being there. That will be the continuous complaint, and they will be right, but at least the heat is still on. Nobody is going hungry.

Complaints or a crowd throwing roses at you, you still have to do it.

Gravity be damned.