Category Archives: Life Sucks

I’m Back!

My website was down for a while because the theme I was using caused a critical error. Grimaulkin.com is still a hairball, and will probably get a new upgrade this year. Even so, I’m not really using this site for much except personal blogs.

Wow, what a year. I’m considered handicapped, and on “Long Term Care”. I still use a walker outside, and went to PT for about 3 months to get my gait/balance back. Most of the time, I can keep my balance. But when I’m really tired, or first wake up in the morning, I have a hard time walking or going down my stairs.

I was selling my husband’s tools, bit by bit. I got screwed a few times, but that was expected when you’re a clueless girl selling Snap-On and Craftsman tools. Well, one guy showed up, who was a property manager and handyman. Since I had a few things that needed to be done around the house, we exchanged tools for work. He put in railings on my stairs, bought me a new casement window to replace the one on my porch blown out by a hurricane a few years back (installation, Spring 24), and fixed my storm doors.

We cleaned up the boxes in my house and disturbed a mouse nest. Yes, we have mice this year. Our cats killed eight of them, and two brave ones are still running around. Called an exterminator, who said the best exterminator is our “mousers”.

In between, we were trying to get approved for my son to be my caretaker. He gets paid by “Seniorlink” who gets paid by Medicaid. I had to get approved by Mediaid, and they did at first in August (I started this process in April). Unfortunately, the person who approved me did it sight-unseen, and it was “approved in error”. I had go through it all over again, but expedited, which meant instead of taking six months, it took three. October, a social worker came out and took her sweet time to approve me in November–for the wrong Medicaid program.

Had to call and wait another month, and on December 15 we were all approved. Now we’re waiting for the check, cut on the 24th–which was a Sunday? And the 25th is Xmas. So it won’t get cut until the 26th. My mail is unreliable, so I have to keep an eye out on it all the time. Ring to the rescue.

Meanwhile, I lose other benefits, but gain more. Lost some SNAP (food stamps), but gained medical. Son now has a job that he’s happy with while I’m still independent. If, heaven forfend, I end up bedridden, he won’t like that too much.

So that’s where I am this year. Still around. Still dialysis. I’m doing a bit of copyediting and social media for my publisher to take some of the burden off him. I might try freelance copyediting, but my vision is going in my right eye, and my left thumb is all messed up so that I have no gripping strength.

I’ve given up on CoX since August. I still have the game when I want to use it, but this publisher work takes up most of my time, both organizing social media for the week/month, developing social media content, and copyediting novels and stories. It’s fun, I love it. This is my new job and it’s great. (Even if the boss micromanages–kidding.)

I’ll be back more often now that we’re functioning again.

When it can’t get worse

On February 12, I had a seizure and a stroke. It effected my sense of balance, coordination, and memory. On the 14th, I had another seizure. I woke up on Wednesday, the 15th after the last thing I remember was going to bed on Sunday night.

I didn’t know where I was or my full name. I didn’t know the year. I couldn’t touch my own nose.

I was a week in the hospital. I refused a skilled nursing facility, so they sent me home with some visiting nurses, PT and OT to regain my sense of balance. I have a walker, which I use temporarily because my right side is weakened. (The stroke was in the left cerebellum area.) I can still walk with aid, climb stairs with assistance, and type.

I haven’t done any writing yet, though I plotted out two stories.

Fluid.

Too much fluid. I almost was in the hospital after getting sick and not being able to breathe. Come to find out, I had fluid in my lungs that dialysis took care of on Tuesday.

I almost passed out on the way to dialysis, I did pass out at dialysis for three hours. I had to go to a funeral after that, and barely stayed awake through that. When I got home, I went right to bed and slept from 12 p.m. to 3 a.m., waking up every two hours. I felt a lot better. I’m still feeling weak. I’m not hungry but I just forced myself to eat half of an Eggo waffle. That’s all I could stomach.

The hospital doesn’t like giving people oxygen or pain meds. I got tons of tests done (CT scan, XRay of the lungs where they found the fluid, blood tests ad nauseum–even a urinalysis). Nothing. Everything normal.

The only thing I felt “wrong” was after eating dinner on Saturday–I felt overfull. Even the next day. But it was Christmas, and what do you do for that holiday? EAT. And throw up.

That’s what happened. Now I’m being careful. When I feel full, I absolutely STOP. I made a whole waffle, but couldn’t eat more than a half.

Maybe this is the catalyst to help me lose weight.

To Write to Market or not

What is a market that is almost a guarantee for sales?

Romance.

Any kind.

Second is cozies.

The reading public is getting older, is mostly female. YA is read by middle-aged women as well as the YA audience it’s meant for. Gay romance is read by women (and now written by women, too).

My publisher, next year, is aiming for short works, because that’s where the money is. I don’t often write short works, and I can’t see myself doing novellas. My goal this year was to get a 75,000 word novel out. Fail.

I want to write a sellable story. Something that will make me money, for God’s sake. I’ve written what I liked, now I’m looking to the market.

And that market is romance.

The only romance I have in mind is Iron Buitterfly that’s been kicking around in my head for the last couple of years. I plotted it out the first third of the book, and lost interest. It got stupid. That’s what I find with romances: they get stupid.

I like to write paranormal romance, romantic suspense/mystery, cozy mysteries (thanks, mom), and gay romance without extra spice. Yeah, I’m getting old. (“Get off my lawn!”) The problem? There’s nothing in the well.

The only stimulus is Longmire and Walker that I’ve been watching while in dialysis. Reading is mostly non-fiction because I don’t want to make the effort to stick with fiction. Should I write fan-fiction, just to get things started? Actually, they’re putting their characters through the wringer enough.

I’m afraid I’ve lost my imagination. Maybe I’m trying too hard. Maybe I’m tying up the muse and she’s being stubborn. I show up every day and look at the empty notebooks I’ve stocked up on, waiting for Calliope to tell me stories.

Maybe the idea of writing for money is what’s stopping me. Or her. Writing used to be fun. Now it’ll be a job.

And Calliope probably doesn’t like that. So I don’t know what to do. Force the money-making story at gunpoint or wait for the inspiration? Man, this is tough.

I was Columbine before it existed

I did some uncovering today.

In March 1989, I wrote a poem called “revenge”. Basically, it was a fantasy of blowing someone’s head off.

I also wrote another poem called “Abandonment,” and a chapter from a novel “Blood And Roses” during my senior year of college. I presented these poems and stories to my English 300 class.

If you read this in 1989, you’d just think I’m a Stephen King fan or like horror. Reading it now, I don’t know now anyone can miss that I was just barely on the edge of sanity. They’d bring me to the Dean’s office lickety-split and I’d end up in the psych ward at the local hospital.

Instead, someone (I think the professor) scrawled across the bottom of the “revenge” poem, “BURN THIS.”

Obviously, I didn’t, as I carried that fury on with me to Hunter’s Realm/The Taurin epic fantasy I wrote. It’s chock full of hate and anger, and a Mary Sue character that makes me wince whenever she pronounces from on high. I kept the fury in the background in everything I wrote. Nothing I wrote was happy.

At the risk of turning off everyone from this blog or my writing, I’m going to be honest here. When I heard about Columbine, I will never forget my feelings while they gathered all the information on the two kids.

What a great idea.

By then, I was out of college and doing medical billing for a psych hospital (how ironic). I didn’t realize I had a “hit list”, a “plan”, and plenty of “opportunity.” As the years went by, I realize now that my obsession with mass shootings was because “Why didn’t I think of that?”

It wasn’t until 2019 when I got good therapy and the right meds. So after the last mass shooting, the one one at WalMart in Virginia, I felt sad. Not for the shooter, but for everyone else. I read his “manifesto” and my heart broke. Dude. I know what you were going through.

How can I reach these potential killers and tell them, “Hey, you’re not alone. I was like you. Then I got better. Here’s how.”

I still have to go through this box. This box that will uncover my dark side that no one understood. The dark side that I can look at now and realize what I was.

The Dark Box

And after that comes the diaries in my hope chest. How far back did this go?

Writing for the week

This week I wrote a short story for The Storyteller’s Tarot called “Death”. I’ve taken the same story and spiced it up for Maxwell Thomas’ reboot and called it “Thanatos.” That story will be available through the website mailing list.

I have been developing Max’s social media for the most part over the past week. Things to do this week?

  • Post “Descent, Introduction”
  • Edit War Mage (which is located at the bottom of my Books To Read pile)
  • Read over/preliminarily edit A Rook Given
  • Get back to writing A Rook Given
  • Plan the next M/M Romance for Max (Iron Butterfly?)

I updated Max’s social media content until August. That’s where I’ll be spending most of my time.

  • Twitter (Monday update) and Instagram (Friday update): @MaxwellTAuthor
  • Facebook (Wednesday update): MaxwellTAuthor

I’m not going to go nuts with Twitch and Tumblr and Snapchat. These three are enough for me. It’s a lot easier to shoot at a target with a rifle then with a shotgun. The rifle is targeted; the shotgun goes everywhere. Yes, the shotgun hits the paper, but it doesn’t hit the target.

Mercury is in retrograde until June 22, so any real writing will be crappy.

Writing like you’re gonna die

My days, empty of work now, have been filled with what am I gonna do when I die. Skip the following block if you don’t want to hear anything about my medical issues.

{begin) Last June, I was told that to get out of dialysis, I need to weigh 100 kilograms. I’ll let you go calculate it, but it sounds better in kilograms. I weigh more than that. It was suggested that I get gastric bypass surgery. Before that, I needed to go on a “strict” liquid diet. Um, I’m on dialysis? Liquid diet is bad? So they allowed me one meal a day, and protein shakes for two other meals. Fast forward to today, where I’ve definitely lost some weight, though it took me a year to do so. I’m not at 100Kg, but I’m within sight of it. Because of that, I’m seriously thinking of not doing the gastric surgery and just trying to lose the weight by eating less and less, and drinking these shakes, which really aren’t that bad if you shake them up really good and they get frothy. I’m giving myself another two years to get down to 100 kg. Problem is, will dialysis last that long? (end)

I’ve been thinking of my own demise, what will happen after that, what will happen with all the stories and characters that are in my head. Gone. They will be gone. So I’m writing and creating characters like the hounds of Hell are on my tail, because I believe that they are. I’ve kind of stopped initiating Role Play in City of Heroes/Villains, but I have characters with eensy-weensy backstories. (I’m lazy in the costume creator and I like mohawks for some reason.) If faced with an RP group, I join in, of course, pulling out those one-line backstories and throwing myself into a character. But I don’t make a point to RP.

Because I don’t want my ideas, the characters, the stories, to spill out from the page that they’re meant to be on. I believe that my writing needs to exist somewhere on paper/computer files for it to be real. Posterity. That isn’t to say I haven’t touched some people by role playing; I’m afraid these characters will go up into the ether. Since I’m a Published Author (TM) I’m afraid of losing ideas.

Now, if you read “Big Magic” by the woman who wrote “Eat Pray Love”, she is of the opinion that The Universe Provides Infinitely. Yeah, wonderful. But I have a finite time on this earth. I’m too scared to lose any ideas that are given me. Which idea will pay off, put me in the best seller list, get me that one big break?

I have 51 characters on City of Heroes. That could be 51 stories if I flesh them out. Once I hit the top level of a character, I will usually stop playing that character because what’s left is lewt and pwn sets. The only one I still play is Grimaulkin because I can play him in my sleep and I don’t have to make much effort.

But let me be honest. I miss the effort, the reasons to role play. If I join an established supergroup (“guild”), they’ve already established story lines and cliques and relationships and I’m a third wheel. If I join one from the ground floor, it’ll go “poof” (That’s happened twice already, so I know better). And then, there’s Pocket D, the club where everyone role plays; but they want to talk about how badass they are and not involve you except as a soundboard. RP in groups is slightly better as long as you don’t get the one who talks about themselves and their backstories in the middle of a fight.

Grimaulkin the book proves that the character ideas in CoX are worth while. I just have to claw through them to find which one to stay with.

Muse: WRITE SOMETHING!!!

Ok, so I want to write. But I have so many ideas. I have a brainstorming notebook that I’ve been scribbling plots and ideas in.

I have A Rook Given that isn’t going to be out until 2022. Because it’s so long to wait for it to come out, I’ve lost interest in writing it. (I like writing under deadlines. Call me crazy.)

I’m trying to resurrect Maxwell Thomas. I don’t know whether I should go back to the Brothers of the Zodiac and re-explain what Ishtar’s role was meant to be and do more stories in that world, or should I redo/replot Iron Butterfly as an M/M romance instead of a heterosexual romance?

Meanwhile, the Muse is demanding me to write something. Anything. Please. Just something.

So I pulled up this blog. Hi there!

I have fallen into the trap of, “My writing needs to have purpose.” Years ago, I had a discussion with my publisher (before he was a publisher). Why do we write? Oh, said my starry-eyed self then, “I write because I like it.” He said something to the effect of, “Don’t you want to be paid for it?” Oh, no, said my naive self. “Write because it feels good.”

What a unicorn-and-rainbows thought. Now it physically hurts me to write too much (carpal tunnel and arthritis are THINGS people my age get), so I have to be cautious. That adds to the “Writing needs purpose” command. I try to rest my hands, but I need to rest them by NOT playing games or scrolling through Twitter. #1stWorldProblems

I take three Tylenol every four hours and hope for the best.

Nothing new

Well, this week was a bust. I’ve written a total of 300 words, for a grand total of 15,800 words. Pretty sad on my part.

Slightly depressed, to tell you the truth. First, I found out that I’m my job and I have a “mutual separation” due to medical issues. They can’t fire me, and I can’t work, so they said if I come back in a year, I regain my benefits. To tell you the truth, I don’t want to work for any more corporate companies. They want to be the center of your life and culture, and I’m sick of that.

Second, A Rook Given probably won’t come out until next year. Which is bad, because that is way too much time for me to get it ready. I think I unconsciously blew it off once finding out that the story doesn’t have to be finished for about a year.

I mean, it’s good that the Press has many more authors. I’m happy to see other books and stories come out by such a diverse group. All we have to do is sell the books.

That’s next.

One month to go

I’m going along with Carnival Farm. My publisher-imposed deadline is April 1, and I’m 32,000 words (180 pages) into it. I’m just over half way done!

I have also written a short story for a project with my writing group. It’s called “Hippolyta’s Dagger” and takes place in the Orange Sector of the Truck Stop at the center of the galaxy. That’s the name of the anthology: “The Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy.” It may come out next year or late this year.

Other writing is spiritual essays, mostly exploring my own religion. I’m not Christian, that is for certain, so it’s more exploring magic; other, new traditions; and trying to sync what I find with what I believe. Because I have time, I’m looking into trying some daily rituals to worship the gods I do believe in. I feel that worship is necessary because–and this might sound morbid–I sense my ending is sooner rather than later.

I have been watching The Twilight Zone series, and there is one episode, “Nothing But The Dark”, that has stuck with me since I saw it. It’s about an old woman who does everything she can to avoid death, but ends up being manipulated by him into a calm, gentle death. That’s what I’m hoping for, that Hermes Psycopompos takes me gently and calmly, offering his hand and showing me the way to the “heaven” or afterlife.

I need to get things straight in my life first, so that my family doesn’t have to worry. I don’t want what happened to me when my husband died happen to anyone else in my family. I want the arrangements to be done and paid for.

So while I look in the dark, in my crone years, resolving my religion and spirituality, I write it out.