The Status of the Latest Justice Book

I get it. You're all anxious for A Barrel of Vintner. I see the stats of people checking the Justice series page.

And I want it done, too!

It's just been a little hard to concentrate over the past ten days. We're in the middle of a war that only the one-percenters want. A buddy of GK's knew one of the seven soldiers killed. And the current leaders of  U.S. are telling us they'll sacrifice all our kids to get what they want.

 The wrongness of those statements makes it a little hard to concentrate.

DH and I are old enough to remember Vietnam. The stupidity. The senseless waste. Children my age being napalmed. And yet our leaders are stupid enough to make the same damn ideological mistakes over and over again.

So, yeah. I'm terrified of losing my only child in a war that makes no fucking sense.

But for those of you that need a new Justice book to forget about the war that's not a war, I'm working on it. The wip crossed the 91K line yesterday. I hope to get another 2K written today.

We're getting there. At least, in fiction.

The real life mess? Well, the mid-terms are coming. Let's see if Americans get off their asses and vote. Because gas prices aren't coming down as long as the Straits of Hormuz are blocked.

What the Hell Is Going on with Suzan?

It's been a little insane at Casa Harden over the last few weeks. The chaos started with one of DH's remaining uncles passed away. It ended with me slipping on ice, tripping over a landscaping brick, and somehow falling on the frozen ground instead of the concrete driveway the day before the Alberta Clipper swept through our area.

I'm still unsure how I managed to injure my right thumb in that delightful show of clumsiness.

Hey, at least, I didn't fall on Princess Bella. The poor thing was merely trying to hurry to get her final constitutional done for the night because even she was cold wearing a t-shirt and her winter coat. (She's a toy breed, and you have to bundle them up because they cannot control their core temps the way a larger dog can.)

There's been a lot more happening in between the emotional and physical aches, but I won't bore you with those details. What it comes down to is I am behind.

So woefully behind.

And what happens? I get invitations from two different editors asking me to submit short stories for their holiday anthologies. For 2025! By the end of the month!

*sigh*

Folks, I literally just finished sending last year's Christmas presents to people!

So, what does it all mean?

It means I'm busting my ass trying to get the books y'all are expecting. I merely took the dates off the Release Schedule because looking at the page was triggering my anxiety.

Today, I skipped yoga, I made sure I had plenty of coffee and tea, and I will be back on the keyboard as soon as I get home from the COVID booster stab.

That's assuming I don't bash my brains on the asphalt in the pharmacy parking lot.