Having a day job is a blessing most days, but damn if sometimes it can get in the way of writing. Especially when it comes to having the energy to actually sit and write. This goes double for when you are disabled.
So yeah, when last we left the Lone Ranger, we’ve had some truly horrible family news that I’ll go into detail later on when I can, suffice to say it’s a situation that all too many people are familiar with and who I deeply wish that no one ever had to go through this. I have also lost not one but both the laptops that I had been using for writing and working. Both of them were definitely older than laptops generally live, one was five years old and one was closer to ten years old, both had linux on them, and bless, I do love that operating system. Both of their screen died completely and the drives are being sketchy, so plugging in a separate screen to get stuff off them isn’t working as well as I hoped.
So I’m writing this from a shiny new Dell Chromebook style thing. At least I had some of the tax return left.
But in the writing realm, it’s been a little harder of a slog than normal. The depression has been hitting very hard. February is historically a horrible month for me, so really the best part of the month was getting to see Black Panther. I can’t wait until I get to see it again. It was…indescribable how much everything was so good and so necessary and so brilliant. I need this to have its own separate franchise – it was that good.
I’ve also been reading when and where I could. Sometimes being too tired to write also means too tired to read. I have a stack of books that deserve longer reviews and I’ll do them – it just may take some time. Two of the books I’ve read have been Gray Widow’s Walk and Gray Widow’s Web by Dan Jolley (full disclosure, I know Dan in the way that panelists at cons know each other. You sit on more than one panel together, etc. ). Also, these books are fantastic, I couldn’t put them down and blitzed through them so fast and then re-read them. They’re fast paced and fun and horrible and amazing in the same ways that comics are, which isn’t so much a surprise since Dan’s also a comics writer. These books have a kickass female hero, a fascinating set of twists and turns, and his prose makes me sit and gasp or laugh or just marvel at the sentence structure (writers who read other writer’s books get hung up on weird things, what can I say?). Anyways, these books are awesome. So if you like Black Widow or Wonder Woman or Jessica Jones or Shuri…give these books a try. I think you’ll love them.
There’s a third book on the way too and I am EXCITE.
The other major thing that I did this month was write and submit a thing to a place and maybe it’ll get in and maybe it won’t, but I’m super proud of myself for submitting it. It was non fiction and pretty personal which just made the submitting jitters that much worse. More on that when I can.