I don’t know about you, but I am ready for the end of the Old year and the start of the New one. There have been just too many ups and downs these past twelve months— both politically and personally. I’ll leave the political ones to your imagination. Personally, as you well know, I have not been in my best writing mood. Renegade, a book that should have been out months ago, is just now passing through the final editing process. At one point, I was worried I might not make an 80K word count, but I finally hit 96K. That’s about the right amount for a sci-fi book. Except for one fairly good fishing experience in Panama, neither Lynne nor I have been fishing much, either. In fact, we did not have the boat on the water in Texas more than a few times.
Part of the reason we did not spend quality time fishing here was that we had to deal with a slab water leak in the Corpus Christi house. We hired a rotten plumbing company that could not find the leak, cut holes in a number of walls (with no repair), and then charged us $1600! After that, we waited for a highly recommended company to come in, and they found the leak in just a few hours. But they were not prepared to fix it until a month or two later. So, I wound up making far too many trips to the coast to sit around watching plumbers tear up the house. But that’s not all.
On the drive back from Corpus to San Antonio after the plumbing fix there, Lynne called to tell me that we had another slab leak in our San Antonio house! I got home just in time to talk to the plumbers, who, this time, believed they had found the leak. They were able to fix it in a few hours. There went another $1600+! Now we have to get people into both houses to do the wallboard repair and paint. Pride of ownership, right?
I don’t want to drone on about the whole year, but you get the drift. I’m happy to report that Renegade is on track for a March release. And I have an idea for the next book in the Records of the Argos series, which I think I will call Defiance. I’ll talk a little about that in one of my future posts.
Meanwhile, I want to thank you for sticking with me through the past months. More than that, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!
