Wednesday,
July 1, 2009
Yeah, I'm back
What can I say? I needed a bit of a break. But I also realized that I started keeping this journal ten years ago this month, and maybe I should come back to it and see if I can rediscover the fun.
Anyhoo, I'm currently plowing ahead on Murder at the Sands of Time (the time travel/police procedural/romance novel that I started in February) and it's coming along nicely. I have an editor interested in Undercover Godmother so that's being edited at the moment in tandem with WKQA. And yes, all of this would have been done much earlier, but I ran into a wee problem with my entire metabolism being thrown for a loop for the last six months with:
dizziness
heart palpitations
fatigue
depression
recurrent sinus infections
joint pain
brain fog
problems remembering things
edema
All of this finally resulting in me getting a raft of bloodwork and an EKG done to see if I was in heart failure. As it turns out, Thumper is apparently in good condition, which is nice, but it didn't explain the quivering puddle of goo that I had become.
So I started doing some research, and found out some fascinating things about generic Synthroid (levothyroxine). Did you know that people who take levothyroxine have reported experiencing:
dizziness
heart palpitations
fatigue
depression
recurrent sinus infections
joint pain
brain fog
problems remembering things
edema
Um, yeah. And I've been on levothyroxine for freaking years. So last week I got my new scrip for Synthroid and made sure it was filled with the name brand stuff, not the generic. A week later, the dizziness is gone, as is the fatigue, edema, joint pain (unless I do something stupid in the pool), general depression and brain fog. And yes, the CRS seems to be going into remission as well -- Lyndon mentioned introducing me to someone 15 years ago, and I actually remembered the event. We'll see about the recurrent sinus infections, and I'm still getting the occasional heart hiccup, but I'm also entertaining the Crimson Tide at the moment and that often signals heart hiccups for me.
In any case, now that I'm feeling better I'm back to work on the writing, plus doing some badly needed gardening stuff out back, and this weekend I plan on getting the bedroom completely kitted out with the new window coverings and all our pictures. Oh, and I'm also swimming every night -- as of tonight I'm up to 35 laps, which is cool.
And speaking of cool
As you know, Bob, writing is a lonely slog across a harsh landscape
broken only by the occasional pit lined with pongi sticks, so you can
understand why I emitted the tiniest squeal of glee when I stumbled across
the following review of Fabulous
Whitby:
The anthology also offers opportunity for the quirky, whimsical and comic, such as Mark Colcannon’s ‘Thick Hides and Furry Hearts’, or Esther M. Friesner’s ‘How Thorvald the Bloody-Minded Saved Christmas’. However, the story that I found the most memorable was ironically the straightest: Melanie Fletcher’s ‘Lost in Whitby’, in which time–travelling correspondence between a prospective landlady and Lewis Carroll is documented on Live Journal.
- Reviewed by Donna Scott in BSFA's Vector Magazine
I'm memorable! Huzzah! But wait -- there's more!
This is all Jeffrey Combs' fault
So
I'm going out to LA in three weeks to see Nevermore,
a one-man show about Edgar Allen Poe, because I've been waiting 22 years
for Mr. Combs to get his talented ass back on stage where he shines
like the top of the Chrysler Building and I'm not missing this opportunity.
*goes back and rereads that sentence*
Never mind, it parses. Anyway, since I'm anal-retentive and like to know the backstory of what I'm watching, I've been reading bios of Poe this last week (I've already read his prose and poetry -- I was an English major, after all). Reading Poe biographies was NOT a good idea, however, because it turns out that not only did Poe pretty much create the modern detective genre (Arthur Conan Doyle pretty much admitted that he lifted Holmes from C. Auguste Dupin) but he also loved cryptography and puzzles, which just made me think about my favorite writer/poet of the Victorian period who also loved those things...
...oh, crap. No. No no no.
Of course, by then it was far too late, and my giggling Muse swanned in from Bali with a cabana boy on her six and dropped a freaking Flemish Giant of a plot bunny on my head.
I
mean, what the hell, Muse? I have three books on the boil already
-- I do NOT need another novel idea right now, especially a research-heavy
Alternate History one where Edgar Allen Poe survives his brush with death
in 1849, marries Elmira Shelton, travels to England two years later for
a lecture tour and to stump up funds for The
Stylus,
and winds up having to solve a series of bizarre murders in Oxford with
the assistance of a young undergraduate by the name of Charles Dodgson
(who in nine years will take three little girls on a boating trip on
the Isis, tell them a fantastical story starring the middle girl, and
publish it under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. And now you know the rest
of the story).
Although I suppose I could do it as a novelette. No, it really needs to be a novel. Crap crap crap.
Dammit, why do I need to sleep? I could USE that time. Oh, yeah -- because I become psychotic otherwise. Or as Elizabeth Moon put it today:
With blazing eyes inflamed
by lack of gentle sleep
this goddess all untamed
takes vengeance on her sheep.
She smites them with her sword
sharp wit then splits their bones
and on their supine spine
her battleaxe she hones.
She will not pause to sleep
but storms upon her path
and all around her weep
the victims of her wrath.
Oh pray Apollo's vial
of some most potent brew
to knock her flat awhile
and sleep perchance renew
the Melanie we knew.
She has a point.
