Hello Fans
I know lately, all you have heard from me are my ‘Word of the Day’ posts. I didn’t mean for this to go on so long, my not sharing with you what is going on.
These last many months have been very strange for me. As you may recall, or not and that’s okay too, I suffered a severe concussion at work. That was in mid-July, and I’ve been out of work since then, as I’m still dealing with the after-effects. Now, mostly it’s the headaches and occasional short-term memory issue.
Then, in mid-August, my website began running into problems, which are still going today. It’s mid-November, and the vendor involved still hasn’t fixed it.
Apparently, I’m not alone with this problem, but I still had to involve my web hosting company and spend hundreds of hours on triaging the problem. Eventually, the company relented and reported that their email administrators had discovered a ‘race’ condition between their mail servers which affected me. I think that the servers are either overloaded or undersized. My tests seem to support that my posts that go out late in the day have a better chance of being delivered to my email subscribers than those that go out earlier in the day. That’s right. Not everyone is getting their mail sent to them. I received this note from them early this morning.
“I’ve let our developers know about this so they can investigate further.”
It’s the same problem that surfaced back in August, and they’re still dicking around with investigating the problem?
Another consequence of my concussion was that for a long time, I was unable to use my computers. Looking at the screen gave me severe headaches. While the headaches remain, I can now look at computer screens without making them worse.
I also suffered from cognitive thinking and short-term memory issues. What really disturbed me was that my continuous stream of creative thinking that was a part of my entire life … disappeared. For months, the imagery that was so much a part of me was gone. I felt like I lost a lover, a friend, a companion, and … well … me.
I tried to encourage its return by editing my first draft of ‘Lucky Bitch’, the third book in my Mona Bendarova Series. That went okay for a while until I discovered that I had to rewrite the ending. I noticed that I had written much of the material included in the last couple of chapters in the first third of the book. What the fuck? I reached out to my beta readers asking for some help, which they graciously gave. However, without a creative stream of thoughts, I couldn’t rewrite the ending, so I put it aside for the time being. Shit. It’s going to be a full year since I published the second book in the series, ‘Broken Steele’. Shit, but I know that there is nothing I can do about it.
So, I kept working on restarting my creative stream. I’m happy to say, about three weeks ago, the creative stream suddenly flared back with a passion. In an instant, a fully formed idea for a new novel, from start to finish, flashed into my mind, demanding release.
Since then, I have been writing up a storm. I’m consumed with trying to get the novel out of my soul and down in print. Every day since late October, I write. Sometimes, only a few thousands of words get written down but often, I get ten thousand or more out. I’ve haven’t checked recently, but I think I’m over 100k words right now and still going.
It’s wonderful to have the stream back. My live-in girlfriend is at times upset with me as I bury myself in my office and write. In the afternoons and evenings, I’ll sit with her. She controls the TV remote while I pick up my laptop and write. She understands but still feels ignored. It’s a delicate balance but the consuming need to express myself outweighs the need to help her feel comfortable. Later that evening, I will put the laptop down and fully dedicate my time to her.
So, I hope to have this new novel out by the end of the year, but we’ll see. It will need severe editing, as I don’t trust my mind right now to keep all of the characters and timings straight. Automatic spell and grammar checking are fantastic, but there are many things they cannot catch.
One thing I have noticed as I write, sometimes I’ll think of a word I intend to write only to look up at the screen and see an entirely different word. Huh? How did I think ‘dog’ and write ‘dolphin’ or ‘plane?’ Yes, it happens, and I can’t seem to correct it. Perhaps my physical therapy which starts next week will help with that. Frankly, I think just writing will ultimately solve that. I just hope that I don’t pass on an incongruous thought to you in my writing. And if I do, I trust that you’ll forgive me.
I had fun looking for images related to my issues. I hope you like the ones I chose, as well as the sexy bonus pic you will get if you share this post via Twitter.
Right now, I need to get back to my novel. Parts of it are still up there in that noggin of mine, demanding a release from its captivity inside my skull. You’ll forgive me if I stop now and return to my novel.
This is Richard Verry, writing to you from my home office. Thanks for caring. I appreciate all of the kind words people have sent to me over these past several months.