First of July

After two 90-degree F-plus days in which the expression “it’s a dry heat” had lost its meaning, a cold front came through, and the temps haven’t gotten out of the 60s all day. It’s the first of July, and I’m wearing a sweatshirt and long pants as I type this. 

It’s a blessing as symbolic as it is real. After an intense seven straight days of temp jobbing to keep my wife and I off the streets, I can cool down my overheated sensibilities to focus on the remainder of the corrections on Grace Among the Dead. While I can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I’ve got to make it close. I’m competing against thousands of zompocalypse storytellers. There’s only two ways to stand out: by being spectacularly good, or by being spectacularly awful. I can’t afford to fall in between with the 99%. I’ve got to be of the 1%. The one that’s not so bad it’s good.

After I get the final galley sent off I’m going to take a day off, then get back to bashing out the outline and beat sheet for The Wrong Kind of Dead, the third and final book in my series. There’s got to be a way to do write these books faster and better, and, by God, I intend to find it.

I keep telling myself.

The Fourth is on a Friday. Need some beach/poolside reading? I’ve got my first book, Bleeding Kansas, available in Kindle and paperback, with an even more offensive and gruesome first edition if you feel the need to be pissed off about something. There’s even a German language edition from the rather ominously named Luzifer Verlag publishing house. I’m all about options.

Tonight, I cut loose to celebrate the end of my temp servitude and the beginning of the second half of the year. Tomorrow, I’m printing the galleys up front-and-back, putting them into a binder, and taking them to the library for one last hard copy read-through.

Happy July, everyone. Let’s make it one for the books.