After a few days away, I’m back on routine. It’s been… interesting. You know what they say about life being interesting. I was telling Mom when we were chatting the other day I’m ready for some stability (and boredom) in my life for a couple of years. You know, to kind of rest after the last few years of constant change and growth and stress. A bit of a plateau, as it were, after climbing a cliff-face. There will always be minor annoyances – the furnace not working, the well pump burning up, a pulled muscle, kids having tantrums, you know the kinds of things I mean. But the idea of knowing what’s in store for me week in and week out is a bit appealing right now.
Which is why I came in to work on a Monday morning with a pleasant feeling of anticipation rather than dead. I didn’t know exactly what I’d be doing, but I knew it would be surmountable, and there wouldn’t be an exam on it later. Ok, maybe a quiz.
On the writing front, there’s not a lot of movement. I had a scene, sort of, hit me the other day and I actually posted that on facebook because I was resting and couldn’t reach my computer. Which is a fun way to get instant feedback and I have to say that’s nice to get a little soul-massage once in a while. I won’t indulge in it often – but that bit was unrelated to anything in progress so it wasn’t a spoiler or anything. I have no idea if it will germinate into a full-fledged thing. I get a lot of those. Usually I try to weave them into the work, but that doesn’t always work. I’ll save it and maybe later. Just like some of the half-formed stories I’ve got lying around somewhere, waiting for me to pay attention to them again. Which I might. And I might just leave them tucked into their virtual drawers until, um, I retire from the day job or something.
Just a few observations: I was reading over the weekend, because it’s still my preferred way to short-circuit the brain around pain impulses. I stumbled on a really nice thriller series that can be gotten through KU, and discovered that book one was great, book two was ok, and book three (there has to be a book three, too many loose ends) doesn’t seem to exist yet. Blood on the Tracks by Barbara Nickless is a tale woven of the railroad tracks, PTSD, and skinheads. It’s very well-written which allowed me to suspend my disbelief over stupid cop-tricks (you know what I mean: cops in real life would never be allowed to act the way the main characters in these books do) and the main character, a former Marine with her K9 partner, is likeable enough to enjoy the story outside the mystery part. In both books, the sheer amount of information on railroads and trains is surprisingly well-woven into the tales, which I really enjoyed without finding it info-dumpy. I also read the last couple of books by Patricia Briggs in her Mercy Thompson series. They were enjoyable continuations of the tale that she’s been developing for something like ten books now. The last one was fun as it departed from the usual setting near Seattle. I’ll continue to pick these up through the library, or when they go on sale. I don’t bother with the spin-off series because I just can’t enjoy the characters in it as much.
