Counting Down

In the next few weeks I’ll be receiving my copies of The Bones of the Old Ones. It’s one thing to hold the advanced reader’s copy. It’s another completely to be holding the actual book with the final cover, the corrected text, the corrected cover copy with blurbs and a few reviews that came in immediately before the book went to press, and I’m looking forward to that.

I wish that the covers didn’t head off for printing quite so early, because it would have been nice to have the starred review from Publisher’s Weekly on the cover, but if I could make things come true by snapping my fingers I guess that would be a little further down the list than, say, world peace or honest politicians.

Right now I’m hard at work on my next Paizo Pathfinder novel. Unfortunately, there are a lot of distractions. A number of you have sent me nice notes about my mother’s sudden illness, for which I thank you. She is recovering in a short term care facility and will shortly be moving in with us. She’s still weak, but in good spirits, and we’re thankful that she’s still with us. Therapy following on a triple bypass is hard work, but she’s a trooper.

A good chunk of my weekend was spent converting my office into her temporary bedroom — temporary until she’s strong enough for us to move forward with the plan of converting our unfinished walkout basement into an apartment for her. Meanwhile, our long planned (and saved for!) remodel of the upstairs bedroom/bathroom is still underway. It began just a week before my mom’s heart attack. (Yeah, we have a whole lot going on at once!) I work every day to the sound of pounding and sawing, which is a bit distracting, as are the occasional interruptions when something needs to be addressed.

In addition to all that, I am trying to get the basement cleaned out and organized so that we can start lining remodeling up for my mom’s future apartment down there. Oddly enough, I’m still managing to get work done on the Paizo book, maybe because it’s a good escape from the rest of this stress, or maybe because I follow an adage I learned from my friend E.E. Knight    , which is “fall down nine times, get up ten.” It’s apparently a Japanese proverb, but it’s just another great piece of writing and/or life advice I’ve received from Eric. In other words, when you face adversity, don’t curl up; stand up and face it.

A few years ago Eric also pointed me to this great quote from one of my favorite presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, and it’s one I’ve taken to heart ever since.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Some of my promotional work for The Bones of the Old Ones is lagging a bit, with all of these other activities, but I should be making the rounds again soon. In other news, the third Dabir and Asim novel, still tentatively titled The Maiden’s Eye, is holding at just over halfway. I’ve given 50 k a onceover polish, and another 20 k has been roughed out. It’s a little more complex even than the second book and is thus will be a little longer, though it won’t be as big a jump in size as there was between, say, the third and fourth Harry Potter novels.

I had planned to spend some time this morning talking about a great Victory Point Games solitaire that I finally got to play a few weeks back, but I’ll have to get to that later in the week. Right now I’ve got to get to writing.