Real life is a pain...

 I hate it when aspects of my day-to-day life intrude on my writing or working...but sometimes you have no choice but to shift focus to the mundane. For example, the apartment below mine became infested with bedbugs, some of which migrated up to my place. I've never had bedbugs so didn't know what I was seeing when I saw one, so didn't kill it. Not smart.

They got into my box spring and I was getting bit, then I learned...and this was a couple weeks after the issue in the apartment below was known...about them and cleaned my place nearly from top to bottom. Problem is, most of my flooring is carpet and I think they got into it.

I've now had three treatments by an exterminator, but I still got bit by one, yesterday. So I've washed and dried all my clothing and such, covered both my mattress and box spring with bedbug-proof slip cases, and just finished scrubbing the carpet around my work table with a power-vac cleaner. I'm lying in bed with my laptop and a printout of APoS, waiting for the carpet to dry.

Good thing about this is, making my work space ready for the cleaner showed me how much crap I've got that I can just get rid of. Tons of shit that means nothing or is unusable, or that I haven't even looked at in years. Soon to go by the wayside.

I'm currently working on the Houston section of the story, and while I like the flow of it, it's still on the superficial side. The point of this part of the book is to show how, even though Brendan's escaped the horror of the Troubles in Derry and thinks the city is a beacon of peace and safety, it's just the same in too many ways. Just a bit quieter, is all.

I feel like it takes a bit too long to get to the point where events begin to parallel what happened to Brendan in Derry...to an extent. I don't want exact replications, just general or similar in quiet ways. I'm trying to make a point but not be loud and harsh about it. I've read books like that and they drive me nuts.

Well...more nuts that I already am.