I hope you’re all keeping safe and well. Wear your masks. Abide by your local health authority’s guidelines for physical distancing and safe reopening. If you don’t take action to protect others, particularly the most vulnerable members of your community, how can you expect anyone else to take action to protect you?

Black lives matter. Indigenous lives matter. All lives cannot matter until Black and Indigenous lives matter.

Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Trans non-binary folk are non-binary folk.

We have a real opportunity here to rebuild a better world, post-covid. I’m worried that we won’t take advantage of that opportunity. I live in hope that we do.

Pandemic life

Not much has changed except that I seem to be rallying/getting used to the new normal. I’m still working from home. Phil’s still doing the running around. We both wear masks when we go out.

With the reopening, my registered massage therapist as resumed taking clients. She pre-screens. Twice. I wear a mask. She completely cleans and sterilizes her workspace between clients. I’m so happy her business has survived. So many small businesses and independent workers have closed because of covid-19.

In terms of my creative life, I have continued to be productive, but I have not been as productive as in past years. I’m being kind to myself. I’m still making headway and I’m recognizing my accomplishments. More on this in the next section.

I made it through my back-to-back virtual training deliveries and am back to my usual duties at work. It’s still surreal, but I’m adapting. Slowly.

I’m actually grateful that most of the series I watch on television are over for the year. I can focus on catching up on my streaming watching 🙂 My reading has slowed a bit.

Phil continues to devote his free time to woodworking.

It’s been very hot up here in northeastern Ontario. It’s been hovering around 30 degrees Celsius with the humidity driving the temperature up as high as 41. For those of you who only relate to Fahrenheit, that’s between 90 and 105 degrees. Every day. For two weeks. We don’t have central AC, but we do have a portable unit we use in the bedroom so that we can sleep at night. We’ve been feeding Torvi ice cubes and we bought her another kiddie pool—which she has not chewed! She just steps in to wet her feet, but we’re good with that. Dogs cool through their panting and their paws.

The month in writing

I exceeded my modest goals again this month, but I STILL haven’t finished my rewrite of Reality Bomb (!) I’m over 100k on the draft, now. This will mean some MASSIVE cuts. I’ve been making notes, though, and I have a good idea of where I’ll be going, but I HAVE TO FINISH THE GODDAMNED THING FIRST!

I set my goal at 6,969 words and wrote 7,595, or 109% of my goal.

My blogging goal was 3,750 words and I wrote 5,529, or 147%.

Finally, I wrote my latest Speculations column. It came in at 1,012 words, or 101% of my 1,000-word goal.

Overall, my goal was to write 11,719 words on the three projects, and I wrote 14,136 words. That’s 121% of my goal. Not as fabulous as the 161% I achieved last month, but, interestingly, more words written. Go figure.

Initially, I was intending to have finished with RB back in March and handed it off to my critique group so I could move on to working on revisions of Marushka. Marushka will be another rewrite and so I’m thinking that I’m going to have to set aside my plans to get back to the revisions on my epic fantasy series and focus on Marushka for the remainder of the year.

Though I was working on the series bible and revision notes for Ascension, that work screeched to a halt when covid-19 hit.

So, I just took a few minutes to revisit my goals and figure I’ll continue working on RB through the end of August and then focus on Marushka for the remainder of the year. I’ll pick up work on Ascension in 2021.

So there, ambitious goal-setting brain. So there.

Filling the Well

Lots to report here this month 🙂

First, I attended the Renaissance Press Virtual Con over the weekend of June 5 – 7. It was all on Zoom and all Canadian. I attended sessions on tropes, eco-fiction, bad writing advice, mystery, characterization, and podcasting.

The following weekend, June 11 – 14, I attended TorCon, and took in sessions with Christopher Paolini and Brandon Sanderson, Neil Gaiman and V.E. Schwab, worldbuilding with a group of awesome authors of colour (Tochi Onyebuchi, Bethany C. Morrow, P. Djèli Clark, and Charlotte Nicole Davis), another Panel with Kate Elliot, Andrea Hairston, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Ryan van Loan, and another fabulous conversation between Cory Doctorow and Nnedi Okorafor. *chef kiss*

I also watched Mary Robinette Kowal record the audiobook for The Relentless Moon. I’m a member of her newsletter community and jumped at the chance to take part, even though I had to view the videos after the fact (‘cause work). From June 16 – 26, I viewed between two and six hours of awesome footage a day, often catching up on the weekends. It was fascinating to watch the process and the bloopers were hilarious.

Finally, on June 20, my lovely sister-in-law invited us out for another family get together in her lovely yard. We’re now allowed to gather in groups of 10 or less and we’ve formed a “bubble group” of six (me and Phil, sis and spouse, and the moms). We played kubb, another yard game that Phil made, and ate burgers and fresh-cut fries.

 

What I’m watching and reading

After last month’s epic end-of-season bonanza, I have amazingly few shows to report on.

Phil and I watched through to the end of Supernatural, season 14. We dreaded the introduction of Jack, the Nephilim, because we knew the destructive potential of an overpowered character. So, of course, Jack loses his powers when Lucifer steals his grace, forcing Dean to let Michael possess him and kill Lucifer. And then, because Jack’s a Nephilim, his grace doesn’t regenerate like any other angel’s would. Then, because he drags down the story without purpose grace, he contracts angelic tuberculosis and dies. And, of course, soft-hearted Sam can let him die and resurrects him with magic that links his soul to his use of power. So, he can’t use his powers without burning up his soul. So … of course, Michael possesses (repossesses?) Dean and then Rowena, killing the team of Apocalypse World hunters, and Jack has to burn off what remains of his soul to kill Michael. At that point, we could see that Jack would be the big bad of the season (we were mostly right and not happy about it). Jack burns Nick alive in front of Mary when Nick tries to use Jack’s blood to resurrect Lucifer, and when Mary tries to tell him what he’s done is wrong, Jack kills her. Through another series of shenanigans, Jack goes rogue and finally, God/Chuck shows up, revealing to Sam and Dean that, after all this time, in all the universes he’s created, Sam and Dean are his favourite “show.” He just loves to watch the drama. Instead of resolving the situation himself by restoring Jack’s soul (Chuck says he can’t) Chuck gives Sam and Dean a Nephilim-killing gun and tells them to kill Jack. Jack is ultimately remorseful and kneels passively, waiting for Dean to kill him. Sam tries to intervene and Chuck eggs Dean on. At the last moment, Dean turns the gun on Chuck and shoots him, so Chuck smites Jack and apparently sets off the final apocalypse.

We were disappointed.

I finished watching The Witcher. Not horrible, but not great. I did not appreciate all the unmarked time travel of the first episodes.

I finished last year’s season of Anne with an E in time for this year’s episodes to cue up. I like the additions they’ve made to the story (Black, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous storylines). I think the creators had to add these elements in order to make the series unlike any other iteration of Anne of Green Gables.

I also finished last year’s run of Homeland. It’s getting a little long in the tooth for me, but I am curious to find out what happens to Carrie now that she’s been incarcerated in Russia for months without proper medication.

I only read three books this month.

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was an interesting mystery along the lines of Russian Doll or Groundhog Day. The concept is too intricate to explain briefly, but it reads well, and the tension is high throughout. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Then, I read Robin LaFever’s Grave Mercy about a sect of assassin nuns in medieval Brittany.

Finally, I read Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. It’s a sweeping epic set over several tumultuous decades in India’s history. I enjoyed it, but it broke my heart because everyone suffered, no one was happy in the end, and the climactic suicide was senseless. It’s stayed on my mind because I keep trying to make sense of it. I think that may have been the point.

And that brings me to the end of the month in this writer’s life.

Until next time, be well and stay safe, be kind, and stay strong. The world needs your stories.