I'm back! (Patreon)

Things went a little nuts for me here.  My wife had to get a three inch tumor removed that ran along her iliac vein, and was then given three weeks of convalescence leave.  Since the military hospital she works at is a Joint Operations facility, her first-line supervisor is Air Force instead of Army.  When he submitted her leave packet, he turned it in to the Air Force, but not the Army.  So, her Army chain of command decided to consider her AWOL.  That's a huge deal.  Being Absent WithOut Leave at the same time you are going through the process of leaving the Army downgrades you from an honorable discharge to either a general or other-than-honorable discharge.  Basically, it would ruin our entire future, all because some dickhead filed his paperwork incorrectly.  When he was confronted about it, the asshole lied and blamed my wife for the mix-up.  Fortunately, the idiot forgot that technology exists.  We had emails, text messages, and voicemails that all proved he was lying.  Fixing everything still took a long time, and getting my wife's name cleared was much harder than it should have been.  I had to literally threaten contacting the press and my Senator before they took it seriously.  It was a case of 'It isn't a big deal to me, so why should I care?' that had me incredibly furious.  It also cost me over two thousand dollars, because we had to stay in a hotel and rent a car for much longer than we expected.  Once again, so skin off their back, so they didn't care.  My blood pressure found new levels of high, and it had a bad effect.  While all this was going on, I had what was called a 'cardiac event'.  A round of testing determined that no damage was done, but I have a new set of medications to take now that make me feel like a damned zombie.

Anyway, things got fixed, and we are back home.  Amanda is on terminal leave, and will be completely out of the Army with a VA rating of 100% by the end of May.  She still has another tumor that needs to be removed, but the VA will be handling it.  The first tumor was completely contained, so the hope is the second will be as well.  If that's the case, she won't need radiation or chemotherapy.  We are very much hoping that is what happens.

Now that I am back, I'm hitting the ground running.  While I was gone, a high school friend was supposed to keep up with my Patreon, including mailing off all of the challenge coins and signed books.  He took his first paycheck, ($200), and bounced.  Didn't even come by the house to pick up the stuff to mail off.  So, I greatly apologize that you don't have your coins or books yet.  I'm going to be sending them off on Tuesday, so hopefully everyone in the US will have their coins in a week or two, and those overseas will have their coins in a month or so.  

Cenotaph of Bones has to be done by April 30th, so that's going to be my focus.  While I was in and out of the hospital with Amanda and my own thing, I wrote a short story on my phone out of sheer boredom.  I'm going to use it for a submission in a compilation book with a bunch of other LitRPG authors, but I'll post it here so you can see it.  It was kinda done as a joke, but I think it turned out pretty good.  Let me know what you think!