Weekly Update - 1/1/25 (Patreon)

I didn't die in the Midwest. Let's start there.

For the most part, the Christmas holiday was actually generally nice, barring the asshole in the airport who decided he had to be smug to my t-shirt. (I flew back to the Mid wearing a shirt that says 'Make Orwell Fiction Again' and a guy said, 'we won, dipshit! Get over it!' Which... I mean, how do you even respond to that level of idiocy? I chose to just ignore him.) My nieces continue to remain adorable and are getting old enough now that they aren't terrified of me every time they see me. (I don't blame them for that - they only see me a couple of times a year.) I got a new tattoo from my best friend, and it looks amazing, and is most of the way through the flaking phase now, although it still itches on and off. I did catch some kind of travelling bug, but it wasn't COVID and I don't think it was flu, as I had the flu shot before I went to New Zealand.

And then there was the trip back. My flight to Denver was two hours late leaving the airport because of 'aircraft repair' and yes, I'm glad we got a fixed plane, but it meant I missed my connecting flight, and they wanted me to stay the night at an airport in Denver and fly out the next morning, the 26th (which is literally the WORST day to travel). But see, here's the thing about the Bay Area - there's THREE major airports within about an hour's drive of each other. So I asked the airline if they could just fly me into San Francisco instead, since there were no more flights to San Jose for the night, and then just reimburse me for an Uber from SFO to my house. They were HAPPY to do that. Once I got onto the SFO flight, it became obvious as to why - the flight was like half empty. I had an entire row to myself. Not just the three seats - the whole ten across the plane. It was wild. The gate supervisor gave me a free seat upgrade, so I must've looked like I was having a day.

Since getting back, I've mostly been sleeping 12-hour nights, trying to shake the cold or whatever, and today, despite still coughing, I actually feel better. I got through Chapter 4 of Captains' Days yesterday, and I hope to have the New Year's Day Silversmith one-off up today, so I don't want to waste too long gibber-jabbering into the news post. I wanted to write while I was traveling, but year's trip was just especially exhausting, and I couldn't get anything to work. I'd write a page in a project here, then switch to a different project for another half a page and then grow frustrated with how that wasn't coming along either. I started in a CD4 on Sunday, and by yesterday afternoon, I felt like I had something that was actually pretty good, and it included one of the longest character descriptions I'd done in a while. And the Silversmith story is outlined and has been living in my head for a while, so within the next few days, I think.

Bit of business - the subscription prices have been turned up for newcomers by $1 for each of the two lower levels. This does not affect existing subscribers, so you'll stay at the same price as long as you're subscribed. It's a minor adjustment, but I do know there are some of you who subscribe for a month, take a few months off, then come back again (which, again, I understand - in this economy?) but you should be aware that next time you come back, it'll be just a little bit more. I haven't adjusted anything other than the commissions rate since I started this back in '02, so I figure it was time for a little bump, but again, it only affects newcomers, not existing subscribers.

Anyway, it's 2025, so welcome to the future. This is the year the Stephen King novel 'The Running Man' is set in, so who knows what sort of actual madness is on our near horizon.

Public releases look like such for the next month:  1/4 - Turn At Sin River 1, Neon Stonehenge 7; 1/11 - QT2:26; 1/18 -QT:UM3; 1/25 - QT2:27; 2/1 - NS 8; 2/8 - QT2:28.

Thanks again to everyone who's here. Y'all mean the world to me. Even when I had some dark days, coughing up a lung, clinging to a heavy bedsheet, I just wanted to get back to telling stories.

What a life.