Photo by Amy Tharp

First Off: I’ve actually been reading! I’ve gotten to where I have to push myself to do that, but I have! In the last month I’ve read a couple of the stories in James Moran’s “Fear Itself,” that I hadn’t read yet; and Robert A. Heinlein’s funny YA novel “The Rolling Stones.” AS well as Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley,” and a new book of poems by Bob Odenkirk and his kids “Zilot.” He says that was a word his kids made up for a blanket fort.

And I read another of C. L. Moore’s stories; “Lost Paradise,” featuring Northwest Smith, her Byronic adventuring hero of a somewhat desolate but fantastic future. (Think Han Solo and Indiana Jones put together but done about 45 years earlier!) And Moore’s prose is wondrous and gripping. Science-fantasy at its best!

I stumbled across a reference to 19th/early 20^th Century writer Ellis Parker Butler while reading up on the Heinlein book and that reminds me I have the book of his Philo Grub (“Correspondence School Detective”) stories which were regarded as very funny once and which I’ve never read which I will have to dip into once I get back home.

And I’ve been writing. Not much on the project that’s due at the end of the year, but some work on various other longer work, including a humorous story I’m aiming for the Saturday Evening Post which is mainly in the plotting stage. Also did more plotting than writing on some other full-length fiction. Often it was the case of Oscar Wilde removing and re-inserting a comma.

And of course the flash fictions. I think I’ve done about five since this last report, including cheating and writing the story for next week as I will be at a convention.

I have several of the Queer Sci Fi columns done for the next few months. I just have to re-write or at least tweak one of them and the column for December I can just ad-lib as it is generally an end-of-the-year reflection.

So, I know I’ve been writing but I need to do a little more on the longer stories. Finish them so I can send them off.

AND keep reading!

That’s about it for now!

ADDENDA: Not quite! I knuckled down and wrote about six-hundred words on the project due at the end of the year.

THAT’S about it for now!

—-jsb, Oct. 21, 2023 5:11 a.m.