Fiction and Non-Fiction

Month: August 2022

Harvest Time

Two years ago, I grew a pair of habanero pepper plants as an experiment to see what happened. To say it was a success would be an understatement. I still have three quart storage bags in my freezer. After all, there’s only so much marinade and pepper jelly you can make and give away at any one time.

Since then, my nephew has caught the agricultural bug, and he has much more space for his crops. This year we’ve been getting regularly deliveries of corn, okra, and several varieties of hot peppers including a wicked item called the ghost chili.

On the Scoville Heat Unit rating jalapenos are 2,500 to 8,000, habaneros about 100,000 and the ghost chili about a million! Even with an unbroken skin on the pepper, they’re the peppers you handle with gloves – or a full bio-hazard suit. My sister-in-law claims to like her pepper jelly hot, but I suspect these may be too much for her, We’ll see.

On a total change of subject, the current edition of Asimov’s has the first part of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s new Diving novel – The Court Martial of the Renegat Renegades. Everything in the house stopped while I binge read that first installment, and now I have to wait until the November/December issue of Asimov’s for the next part. If you’ve read any of Kris’s Diving series, especially The Renegat, you’ll want to grab this, both in Asimov’s, and when the actual book becomes available. I know I will

Life Rolls

Life rolls happen when you least expect them.

Or, rather they do in my case. And when they happen they consume everything you have to the exclusion of everything else. I had one of those in July when I received photo from the manager of our rental property showing a hole in the kitchen ceiling. Somewhere else in the building, someone’s AC unit had popped a pipe and distributed water everywhere.

That meant an unplanned visit, and even though the building management made the repairs, we still had to coordinate the repairs, the painter, and clean up – as well as continuing the day job.

Needless to say, something had to suffer, and it was my writing. July recorded the lowest monthly word count since I started keeping track, and I’m now about 20,000 words behind where I was at this time last year.

Until last night, I’d written barely anything in August either, but I did manage to jot down some thoughts and ideas on Death at a Wedding, that today went into the story. It wasn’t as many words as I hoped but at least I climbed back onto the wagon, and it feels pretty good so far.

I need to adjust my plans for the rest of the third quarter, but hopefully it will work out. And hopefully no more life rolls!

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