Almost human...

Still a bit stiff behind my neck and shoulders, but better. Helped that I'm trying to figure out WTF another guy who does packing for shipment is doing so I can work up a schematic of how to prep them for transportation. Took my focus away from my aches and pains. He's a bit more casual about packing than I am, and his boxes are turning out to be 70-75 lbs, each. Not cool. Doesn't help that most of the books are massive folios.

I'm fasting tonight for bloodwork, tomorrow. Getting a physical on the 18th and tests run on the 25th to see if all my parts are still working or if I need to go into the shop. Who knew my sell-by age was 70? Which is a lot later than I thought it would be. For years I thought I'd be dead by the age of 45. Who knew that I'd get missed by the AIDs epidemic while every man I knew in 1980 would not? Weird how life works.

I posted another image for Missing on BDSMLR. The last acceptable one for general consumption. This is the one where the story clearly becomes about slavery. Sure, it's a graphic novel that's got gay erotica all over it, and I am having fun doing it, but all of my books have meaning to them, no matter what people may think. Even my coloring book, Demented Dreams, is about fantasies being fun, even wicked ones.

I watched Judgement at Nuremberg, again. It's a long, intense movie about holding people responsible for the evil they allowed and committed. It's so damned relevant to today's situation, where a radical group of fascists want to take control of America and too damn many people are just going along with it or refusing to get involved. It should be required viewing for all students.

Old man...

 This trip was rough. Not just tiring, physically, but painful. I wound up repacking 4 bulk containers with cartons, all on my own. The guy who was to help me had a dental emergency and no one else was available. So...if I wanted it done, I had to do it. 120 cartons, a mix of Gaylord boxes, Paige Bankers boxes, outsized boxes and something wrapped in bubble that felt weird so I left it alone.

Got it done by 3:30 so returned to the hotel, feeling tired, mainly, and set myself up for the Mark Twain House, the next morning. It was a pleasant if meandering tour of his house and history which entailed going up and down stairs, which gave me my first hint of problems. But overall it was worth it.

A Leggo Mark Twain greets you in the lobby.

Across from that is him sitting under a photo of his house.

Mark Twain's house, built specially for him by his wife's wealthy father.

The room where he wrote Huckleberry Finn and Connecticut Yankee, at the desk in the corner.

Some of Mark Twain's notes

Dueling portraits made the same year by different artists.

Where he traveled, at a time when travel was anything but easy.

After this, I drove home. Made it fine since I stopped several times along the way for a breather so didn't have any sleepy spells. Slept hard...and wok up aching all over. Joints. Back. Neck. Head. Legs. Feet. It's like I'd run a marathon.

Downed a lot of Tylenol and ran a few errands, then vegged. Yesterday was only a little better. Mainly hips and neck aching, by that point. Today was fine enough. Still achy in my hips but a lot better.

Guess I'm finally falling apart....but this gives you an idea of what I did on the job. 30 lbs each.

Can't do this, no more. Too old and creaky...

Nice day...

Caladex bought me lunch for my birthday. Beef Teriyaki from a Japanese restaurant. It was damn good. I like Healthy Choice's, too, but theirs was much better. Then I bought groceries for my trip, tomorrow. Driving down to Hartford to pack some archives going to Scotland, then driving back. No more posting till I've returned, Friday.

I did some repotting of plants and hopefully did not kill them. I've never really done that, before, but I have a green pepper vine that's putting out little ones and was in a small pot. And my wandering jew is going nuts so that got redone. They all have plenty of water so we'll see how it goes while I'm gone.

I ate a whole cantaloup for dessert, this evening. Not a great one but tasty enough. Talked to my sister in Aransas Pass and brother in San Antonio and got lots of well-wishes on Facebook and Twitter. Had a lovely time correcting the flight for a trip to Seattle in October. The people at Caladex bought it because it's for the Seattle Book Fair, but they input my name wrong. I've got 2 Ls in Sullivan, not 1. That was real fun.

I'm thinking once I'm done at the warehouse on Wednesday, I'll try to visit the Mark Twain House in Hartford. Thing is, it's by guided tour only and I don't know when I'll be able to make it so can't pre-purchase a ticket. Guess I'll just show up and hope for the best. At least they should let me into the gift shop, right?

I've read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that's it. I keep meaning to do A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but never get around to it. If they have a copy, maybe I'll buy it.

Slavery and its benefits

Missing has become about slavery. Apparently, some educators in Florida believe slavery was a good thing, for some. They learned trades and skills that could help them once they were freed. Seriously! Aside from the flat out depravity of that attitude, the main implication seems to be that it was only appropriate for non-White people and was more like a trades college.

I've already written one of my erotica novels about how slavery is just the laws of Capitalism taken to their logical extreme. In that book, Hunter has found he can get really rich by selling young men into sexual slavery. He starts out with lads from Mexico and Brazil and parts in-between, because no one in the US really gives a shit about them. And the Latino governments are so corrupt, no one will care...so long as the proper amount of money crosses the local politicians' palms.

Things don't go wrong for Hunter until he messes up an assassination and is arrested in Brazil. The people he was working for aren't happy with him and he's now on his way to hell...which I strongly hint is in Russia. But that's the pinnacle of truth, when it comes to Capitalism. If you're not in the top 100 wealthiest people in the world, you're just fodder for whatever they want.

Well, Missing has settled on that direction. All of the guys who've gone missing in the area will turn out to be enslaved in a male bordello. Where, exactly, it is I haven't figured out yet, but I'm leaning to atop a high-rise in the middle of an unnamed American city. And yes, it's going to be very non-con and explicit on the level of a Heavy Metal graphic novel. Just gay, not straight.

I used to love that magazine. It had some great artists in it -- Moebius, Giger, Druillet, Adams...amazing work, though much of it treated women as sex objects. All very dark, too. Well, I'm going more the Etienne route with a bit of Tom of Finland. Fun to be had, for me.

Typical me...

Feeling better, thanks to Cipro. Who knows? Maybe I'll actually seem human by Monday, my birthday. At least I'm not as cranky or achy as I was.

I tried to push prepping BA for immediate publication in ebook but realized I need to go through it carefully for typos. I'm the king of the damn things. And prepping the cover is going to be a bit more complex because I'm adding another face to it and have other ideas...so I'll deal with it when I get back from this latest trip.

I should learn I cannot push too hard on whatever I'm writing. I'm too prone to mistakes. Inconsistencies. Repetitions. Moments that make no sense. Missing words. It's depressing that it happens...but at least I catch them. Most of them.

I'm deliberately waiting to go over the notes for APoS till I get more feedback in. Two other people are reading the book to let me know what they think. It hasn't been easy to wait, but I'm making myself hold off till Labor Day. After that, I want to get immersed into it, again, with all the possible corrections and suggestions, update the story and then let it sit till the end of the year. Get to work on the Houston section.

I've decided to aim for publishing all of it in 2024. Set up part 1 in the first quarter of the year, part 2 in the summer, and part 3 around Christmas. All in hardcover and ebook. I'll think about the paperback editions after it's all done. That's the plan, as of now. It'll probably change forty-seven times before I'm done.

God, I'll be so glad to finish this project. I love Brendan and his journey, but it's become a lot of very demanding work and I just need to finish it for him. And me.

BA Second draft done

I finished a solid second draft of BA-The Prussian 001 and will go over it again, tomorrow, then set it u p for publishing on Smashwords in ebook. I think this is something like what the cover will be. I have a job I'm driving to in New Haven on Tuesday and want this out of the way by then. When I come back, I am doing no writing till the end of August.

Well...officially. I got my first set of notes back on APoS and the initial commentary was very good. I'll need to go through it to see what all she came up with, but seems once again I'm getting complaints about my use of ellipses. Or overuse, as they put it. Which I can see. I use the ellipses as a breathing point in the story, and it's really not working as well as I'd like.

I'll remove most of them from BA tomorrow, too. But I'm not doing a major rewrite, as I'm prone to do. I get lost in them and they don't really add anything except time to the project.

Except...(note the ellipses) with APoS I do think the massive number of rewrites helped me hone the story style and information down to a good degree. I was getting too lost in the minutia of the time and place, and letting the people slide, for the first several drafts. Now it's set and ready to be updated and then set aside for a few months while I work on the Houston part.

I'm finally feeling better, thanks to the Cipro. I did develop a nagging tickle in my chest but it's gone. Took a Covid test, just to be safe, and totally untouched, so it might just have been a reaction to the smoke from Canada.

Anyway, tomorrow will be busy so I'm looking forward to it.

Creaking along...

Didn't sleep well, last night, so all out of sorts through today. Cipro is taking its time to work, though I do wonder if it's making me hungry. Yesterday I bought some California Roll sushi for lunch, today...but ate it last night. With extra Wasabi and soy. And an apple. 

Blood sugar is way crazy, right now, but what's crazy is I could eat another serving of it, right now, and would. Except I don't want to go out. I'm not dressed or presentable in any way.

I become morose when I get sick, and having to wait on test results to come back from the lab on my urine sample adds to it. I don't want to focus on anything except what I can't do. Like have a cup of hot tea right now because it'd be too close to when I took a dose of Cipro, and I make it with milk. Or needing to hit the bathroom every half-hour. Or taking a dump 3 times...again, thanks to the anti-biotic.

I need to finish up the last bit of BA-The Prussian and upload it to Smashwords, but I just cannot seem to make myself hunker down and do it. I open it up then find something else to do. Something completely unimportant. I've taken avoidance to the realm of an art-form, it seems. I'd like to think this is normal for a writer...for anyone in an artistic endeavor...but maybe I'm just burnt out. And can't even get this last little thing done.

It's just, I do want to finish APoS. All three volumes. I want to finish Dair's Window. BA is fun, in a way, but it's really just mm erotica. No deep meaning to it beyond keeping it locked in historical context. None of my stories are just about the sex, which is why I get irritated when they're referred to as porn. That description is a limitation on them...even as it's partially correct. Dammit.

Fuck, I'm truly a cranky beast of an old man.

The fucking joy of fucking aging...

My not feeling well drove me to see a doctor and I've been set up for some tests and put on an anti-biotic. Cipro. A 10 day regime, 5 days before my birthday. This growing old shit is growing old. But I didn't realize how much it was messing with me or how wound up I'd become over the last weeks in trying to help at least a little in Ukraine's situation...not till this came on the radio as I drove home.

The hosts were talking about how in 1922 Serge Koussevitzky asked Ravel to orchestrate Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition for a full orchestra. It had originally been written for piano. To illustrate how it worked, the whole of The Great Gate of Kiev was played...and I had tears streaming down my face, as I drove.

Mussorgsky was a Russian composer responsible for some magnificent music. Night on Bald Mountain. Boris Gudunov. From an aristocratic family outside St. Petersburg, he ranks with Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev. All of them did music I love, but because of Russia's terrorism in Ukraine, I feel wrong about loving them, because all of them were supporters of Russian exceptionalism...that Russia is supreme and all other countries her lesser.

I still haven't reconciled my love for Anna Karenina, War & Peace, Brothers Karamazov, The Lower Depths, Crime & Punishment, and The Cherry Orchard with Russia's animalistic brutality in Ukraine. Then there are aspects of my own writing that include Russian connections...like naming Daniels fictional detective Ace Shostakovich in The Lyons' Den. I'd like to think one can separate an artist's creations from his life, but you can't really. They inform his choices, and all of these men were very Russian in their work.

Maybe that's why I was weeping -- the beauty of that music echoing the place where it's set and knowing the artist was a strong supporter of Russia's egotism that's led, so many times over the years, to genocide of entire culture, and death. It hurts in so many ways. But one positive thing about this piece is, its meaning has taken on being in support of a free Ukraine, and that makes it wonderful in ways never expected by Mussorgsky.

X marks the fucking nuts

Dear God, what a desecration Twitter has become, now that it's X (which I hear is in violation of a trademark Microsoft has on that letter used for a social media platform). The supposed discourse has become completely insane. I've blocked more MAGAt fools, today, than in the last six months because I'm no longer willing to even give them the time of day.

Jesus, the stupidity it takes to be one of those people. The deliberate refusal to pay attention to reality. The lies and misrepresentations and accusations and them laughing at us as if they think they caught us in a boo-boo, then when we back up our post with facts suddenly spitting out word garbage to deflect from it or call names. 

Favorite cat-call lately? Groomer. Why? Because I'm progressive in my politics and support the Trans Community and Drag Queens. Never mind it's MAGAts getting caught grooming and raping kids, and hoarding kiddie porn. Priests, ministers, youth pastors, cops, teachers, coaches, politicians, all over the country. Not one word about any of that, from them. Just blaming Trans people and Drag Queens for it all.

I stay on because I can hear the latest news from Ukraine and get the current stats. No other platform seems readily available for them to use, there, and the media has all but moved on from the slaughter and destruction in that country. Yeah, the center of Odesa was bombed to hell and people sunning on a beach were hit, too, killing a child, and a port on the Danube was blown up, but have you heard the latest about the uproar from Ben Cohen over the Barbie movie? And it's not just American news; it's also the BBC and al-Jazeera. Shit, it's sickening.

I got caught up in it and did no writing, today. And now I'm sure my blood pressure is through the roof. So I'm taking tomorrow off, having a nice lunch out and a Bloody Mary, and dreaming of the day we can finally kick those motherfuckers to the curb.

If Mother Nature doesn't beat us to it.

Rough day but Missing #6 done

I worked out frame #6 of Missing and posted it on BDSMLR. It's on the busy side but it's damn close to what I wanted. I thought I had frame #7 & 8 sketched out, but they don't work, anymore, so that's ahead of me. I still don't know where this is going -- slaving like in Hunter, rape and kick out like in Bobby Carapisi, serial murder like in Underground Guy, providing DNA for an advanced civilization like in The Beast in the Nothing Room. It can go any direction and I won't know where until I get there.

The nice thing about doing the sketch is it took me out of my depressed frame of mind. I'm torn up over the slaughter and destruction in Ukraine, at the hands of Russian beasts, and horrified at how the West will do nothing to stop it.

Odesa was bombed. People killed and injured in their homes. A cathedral considered a World Heritage Site seriously damaged. All deliberate. Hyper-sonic missiles fired by ships and submarines in the Black Sea, well out of range for anything Ukraine has to fire back. We're standing aside and letting Russia destroy another country while doing jack shit in response.

We once swore, "Never again." Obviously, we did not mean it, since this is not the first country Russia has brutalized without response.

I also felt bad, today. Not sure why. Probably just has to do with getting old and being broke...facing bankruptcy. If I'm allowed to file. My laptop acting up. My desktop acting up. Having to find ways to work around their new limitations. Having trouble focusing on writing anything. Taking 2 hours to talk myself into doing that sketch for Missing. I guess I've finally burnt out.

I'll post this section of Blood Angel within the next couple weeks. Then I'm spending August watching DVDs and reading. See the Hitchcock movies I haven't seen, like Under Capricorn. Some film noirs, like Detour. The whole 12 years of Big Bang Theory and all of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. See if that will recharge my batteries.