The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Volume 2, Issue 4 - Wednesday, January 25th, 2017

Howdy, patrons!

I completely missed posting last week; sorry about that. The third part of Gift Exchange proved a bit more difficult to crack than anticipated, and I ended up finishing that last night. It's been sent to My Husband, the Dragon (™) and approved, so I should have it up for you tonight! I'll do my best to make sure part four is up before next Tuesday -- there are a lot of other items on my to-do list, and I'm afraid they're fairly time-sensitive.

I'm sure I've told all of you about my Winter Session course on The History of Rock and Roll. It's been a fun ride so far, but it's a 13-week course condensed down into four. Each week, there are two quizzes, one test, and at least three comments on a discussion forum that I have to make. In addition, I've had to read three to five chapters of the text. It's a lot of work, but I've learned an awful lot in that time and been introduced to some really nice bands. I am definitely going to be revisiting a lot of 70s funk from here on in. :) 

This week is even more truncated than usual -- instead of seven days for all of this work, I only have four. On top of the usual workload, I'm also writing a five-page paper on music. I've chosen to talk about five songs than mean a lot to me and place them in personal, historical and industry context. Those are "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King, "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" by Marvin Gaye, "Running With the Devil" by Hootie & The Blowfish, "Let Down" by Radiohead and "Snakes" by Bastille. It should be fun, but it's also a ton of writing. 

Anyway, that's a big reason why my writing schedule has been so out of whack. Once Thursday rolls around and the quizzes, test, paper and discussion forum posts are put to bed, I'll have a brief respite before the Spring semester starts and I'll dive into my next two classes -- Elementary Statistics (online) and Argumentation & Debate, which meets twice a week for twelve weeks. Whew! 

In February, I'll be editing and posting "Stable Love," a commission that I wrote some time ago for a dear friend who has been immensely patient with me. I'm really looking forward to showing it off to everyone and hope folks enjoy it. I have earmarked the next serial after that for March and April, but I'm not quite ready to talk about it yet. Let's just say I'm SUPER excited for it and I'm really looking forward to diving in. 

That's it for today folks -- I really appreciate your patience while I try to dig myself out from my workload.