The pressures of work were somewhat lighter this week, which gave me time to catch up on several things which had been neglected. Like sleep. And cooking food for meals. And cleaning my house.
I also found time to transfer the last of my websites from the old host to Dreamhost, where maintenance is much easier than anywhere I had previously hosted this blog and SifuLee.com. I like only having to click a single button to upgrade PHP.
With the transfer complete I am taking the opportunity to change, update, and/or improve things, as both sites have been around in various forms for over twenty years. This will be an ongoing chore.
Reading
I am having a lot of fun reading through my back issues of New Edge Sword & Sorcery and DreamForge. Exactly the type of fix I need right now.
Writing
In preparation for the Month of Writing (formerly NaNoWriMo), I decided to dust off one of my old Weekly Writing Prompts from January 2024. This one had “Undead” and “Addiction” as the subjects, “Ship” as the setting, and “Magic Realism” as the genre.
No problem, right? Two years ago, I was able to knock out a story a two a day for a month, needing only a few minutes to come up with an idea which combined all four prompt points.
Apparently I am out of practice. After staring at the prompt for a week I came up with (tentatively) an idea which I will work on this weekend and next week. It involves a bit of Dante, a bit of Greek mythology, and a place somewhat, but not entirely like, New Orleans.
That’s a lot of work for a short story I haven’t even started writing yet.
Weekly Writing Prompt
Subject: Empire, Espionage
Setting: Urban
Genre: Steampunk
Listening
Chris de Burgh, “Don’t Pay the Ferryman,” from his 1982 album The Getaway. While I was planning out the short story discussed above, this song, which I have not heard in at least 30 years, popped into my head.
Interesting Links
- “How Much D&D Stuff Is There Anyway? Part 4: Novels” – There were a LOT of D&D novels published from the early 1980s until now. I have probably read at least forty of them.
- “Who’s Delusional, Who’s Drugged, Who’s Disinformed? It’s Hard to Tell” (Nat Wilson Turner, Naked Capitalism) – Each member of MAGA, with zero exception, is at least two of the three.