On the bright side, after doing the procedure approximately 168 times so far I’ve become quite adept at doing infusions. I now have the process down from at least an hour each time to about 45 minutes, and have become much better at multitasking, doing this bit with the ring finger and pinky of my left hand while I’m simultaneously doing that thing with my thumb, middle, and index fingers of my left hand and this other thing way over here with my right hand. Now if only there was something I could control with a foot pedal.
A few people have asked me to make some kind of inspiring statement about how Stupefying Stories is going to rise from the chaos and burst forth in new glory. I could make such a statement, or I could be honest. While the last eleven years have been challenging (to put it mildly), and the last 27 months have been quite difficult, the past eleven weeks have been downright hellish. I keep making plans for how and when we’re going to reemerge and resume publication, both of new books and of new stories and features on this web site, once the current medical crisis is resolved, but then Something Happens to throw everything into chaos again. Thursday morning, at 1:30 a.m. CDT, it was a ruptured hose in the laundry room—which was easily controlled and contained, but not before the flood had spread into my office, which I didn’t discover until about 9 a.m. Thursday morning, when I went into my office to boot up and get to work for the day and found I now had an indoor water feature.
Helpful hint: if you have a basement office and one or more tower computers, spend a few bucks, get some concrete blocks, and get your hardware up off the floor. It can save your sanity, as it did mine this time. The only irreplaceable thing destroyed in this misadventure was the only existing copy of one particular book manuscript.
Shrug. To be honest, I was never going to finish writing that novel anyway. I’ll take it as a sign and move on.
More news next week,
Bruce Bethke
P.S. In the meantime, here's some art I got for another project that never happened. Enjoy!
3 comments:
I don't want to sound like a broken record or a nag, but for those of us with stuff potentially in the pipeline, can we at least announce they were picked up?
I've had one market I was waiting for 4 years to release the story, so you can't do any worse than them. I'm not asking about the "secret" project, just the solo story, my last one through Codex, The one I won? (From late July).
I don't want to annoy or upset anyone by announcing without permission, hence asking.
Please?
Over and over again I go through stuff at a much less intense level than you guys and realize that my own limitations make me have to draw back and just do ME. It is hellish, as you say, but I do understand... at least the concept of needing to circle the wagons around what is most important in our lives and either rid our lives of them or back-burner them. As always, wishing the best to you guys.
I'm so sorry you're both having to go through this.
Post a Comment