Promises Promises

  

 Try as I might I can't seem to make this blog a regular thing- intentions and the road to hell and all that...

I'll try to do better this year because, truly, writing and jotting assorted trivial day-to-day things here helps prime me for writing in larger chunks- like books lol. 

  So what's happened this year? Welll--- pandemic, POTUS turnover, summer craziness, and the like. 

  Pandemic - the initial Covid 19 virus has mutated and split off just like all the horror movies warned us against but we (as in humanity) seemed to think it wouldn't really happen. It did and now- vaccinated or not, we have 'variants' that are running rampant through the world with the most prevalent at this time being the Delta variant. There are others but this is the one that is most destructive and deadly right now. 

And speaking of vaccines, we have them and they are amazingly effective but because so many people REFUSED TO GET THEM the virus mutated. The vaccines became political and it's been our downfall. 

Summer - socially, it seems as if most of the world has pretty much given up on stringent safety measures and is just hoping for the best. As is usual for me, I'm stuck somewhere in the middle. I miss my friends who all seem to be going out and doing things but I am still a little afraid to go into huge crowds - and I'm not invited, so I guess for now I just hang out at home. (I think it's the alcohol thing again: I haven't drunk alcohol for so long that I sometimes forget that it's an issue..) The summer crowds this year, despite being maskless and basically wide-open safety-wise, were particularly brutal to restaurant and service industry people- I have no idea why. We saw several jaw-dropping behaviors and around the country, other workers reported the same. This leads us to...

Worker shortages. All kinds of people moaning about lazy service workers that won't get off the dole and go to work. Most of the complainers are 1.) business owners not wanting to pay enough for their employees to eat and pay rent (rather than one or the other) or retirees who don't have a dog in the game but feel somehow qualified to critique and judge.  There's also the issue of over 6000 people dead from Covid but we don't hear about that very often.

Given all of that, it was another insanely busy summer and I'm happy for the rest. 

Well, our version of rest, anyway lol. We just finished (yesterday!) putting down the new hardwood flooring in the upstairs. We did the downstairs 2 years ago so we have now completed that project- it only took 13 years hahaha! Last winter we converted the garage into a 1 bedroom apartment that is used for rental income and that has gone very well. There are a few after-summer repairs to be made but that project is also done and it was rented all summer, so we're FINALLY getting house stuff taken care of that we've been whittling away at; it feels good. 

Book 2 in the Faerie Tale Chronicles

Work stuff for winter can now start since the flooring project is done. I got the paperback proof for Book 2 (The Journey Stone: A Charlevoix Faerie Tale)  in the mail yesterday and went through it, marking missed typos, formatting issues, and cover color corrections that need to be done. That will be taken care of this week and a (hopefully final) proof sent back to me for approval. If all goes well it will be available for worldwide purchase within the month. The link above is for pre-orders and the live kindle edition. Today the hardback edition proof is due in so lather, rinse, repeat that process. As usual, the hardbacks are not available for wide release but are collector items available only through me. Once all of that is taken care of I can go back to work on Book 3 which I'm about a third of the way through with Book 4 partially mapped out, whew! All of that needs to be done but you know what? I think I want to paint today lol! I haven't painted in a year and I so miss moving color around on a canvas. I might just disappear into that today...

Well, there we go- basically caught up. Like I said, I will try my hardest to be more productive on this blog, its good for me and I need the writing schedule, to be sure! Feel free to drop a 'hello' in the comments! 

~Annie