Updates from the homefront

Life has been pretty crazy lately.

I think I did an update not too long ago talking about how my S.O. and I had gotten engaged in April. Then there were several trainwrecks that happened – his grandmother passed away, for one, and I had some drama with my folks over the engagement. Normal life things, but they do take a lot of energy and time.

On the writing side of things I have been submitting my most recent batch of short stories. I’ve had, as expected, numerous rejections, though I’ve had two of those rejections come back slightly positive, with one being a personalized rejection and the other being short-listed before being cut. That has been encouraging. My short stories are definitely in a different place than they were even two years ago, and I can feel my style changing. I think that will be good, as long as it’s positive change that tightens the pacing and the characters, and not change that erases my voice. Also, I got new notebooks!

I’ve also read some good books. Luna: New Moon has been my favorite recently, which is no surprise as it is by the master Ian McDonald. His work is amazing. I’ve started The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi on audiobook as well as Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist. The former is for running to, and the latter for listening to while driving to work. I love the voice of the narrators for both of these books, but especially the voice for Bad Feminist. She has such a rich tone. (Though I have learned more about competitive Scrabble than I ever wanted to with that book.) And I have been reading Princess Jellyfish, which is a manga – the anime was on Netflix a while ago, which is what got me into it. You can download the chapters on Comixology through your Amazon account, so that’s a pretty neat thing if you’re into graphic novels.

Lastly, I’ve been working in my garden, but the groundhog has found a way to climb over my fence and started eating everything so I need to fix that desperately. Pretty much all of my lettuce, peas, carrots and kale have been wiped out. I harvested all of the spinach and chard before she could get to it though, so at least I managed that much. I haven’t been over to the other garden to check the tomatoes and peppers, because there is construction going on around it so it makes it hard to stop in right now, and also because we have had rain every day for weeks so I’m not worried about watering the plants. The S.O. and I will probably make it by there in the morning since he is not working this weekend, which means pancakes and walks all over the neighborhood for garden checks and fruitshare pickup and getting movies for the week at the library.

Oh, and I may be switching jobs soon, which has been taking up a lot of my time and I’m very excited about for a lot of reasons, but I will tell you more about that perhaps at a later date. Suffice to say that I am only considering the move because of how amazing the position is, and if I get it I won’t have to commute anymore. Less time for audiobooks, but I’m happy for the trade if it means I’m more productive at home.