Out of the Mud

Wow, what a busy week. I was working on my truck until 9:00 Wednesday night and spent part of Thursday morning tinkering some more until I finally gave up and had it towed to the service center. Turns out there was a single bad wire, so, apart from the tow fee things weren’t nearly as bad as I’d feared.

While I’m far behind, I have once again been reminded of how I ought to be thankful of all the things that I take for granted. Say, time to work, or a working truck, or my health.

Today I’m turning attention back to my Dabir and Asim story for Kaiju Rising. I’m delighted that the funding level not only reached the stretch goal that activated my story, but that ALL the stretch goals for the anthology have now been met. I find myself in the odd position of having a story I’m not through writing already planned for an antho.

I believe I’ve mentioned before that writing a character who’s a genius is tricky because I’m not a genius. And right now I’ve written poor Dabir and Asim into a corner and am scratching my head trying to get them out. Dabir, of course, will put it all together quickly over the course of the story, but Howard doesn’t have it yet.

Still, though, the day is good. Wonderful weather here. And I had a delightful accidental phone conversation this morning. Allow me to explain. My phone is a constant irritant. The way that the screen touch buttons are arranged means that if I put the phone to my face while talking I can accidentally mute my phone, activate the speaker, block the mic, or even dial random strings of digits. While finishing a chat with my wife while she drove into work I accidentally chin dialed Lou Anders.

Lou’s pretty busy these days so I’ve been holding off talking with him, but once I accidentally dialed we kicked back for about a half hour and he regaled me with details of his recent trip to Norway. I got to vicariously explore the fjords, lone mountain farms, a waterfall glimpsed through a cloud, Viking barrow mounds, and all manner of cool Norwegian things.

Now I’ve got to go make Dabir brilliant. Have a great weekend.