Stultus: Blog

I'm still recovering from my major heart attack from a few years ago, but no other new medical issues have popped up. I have about 30% heart function left, which limits my physical activities and my usually now too-low blood pressure also limits days when I'm still reasonably 'smart' enough to be an author. The fog is more concerning, and I now suspect I had a slight stroke also, when I died three times in the OR. Today, things are no worse at least.

Also, for the last several years my wife's own health has been more iffy than even usual. She almost died back in the early 00's but we were both too stubborn to quit... but for at least the last year, I've been nursing her at least as much as she was tending after me. The stress alone was really killing my latent creativity and write for others, when too too much needed to be done here. Late Friday night she died reasonably peacefully in her sleep. We had been married for about thirty years, and known each other since high school. I don't consider her replaceable.

I've still been working on various stories a bit, so give me another six months or so get my solo senior semi-abled life into some sort of order and I can probably arrange more writing time... I've never been a sit in front of the TV sort of retired person.

Words of condolence and creative motivation are as always greatly appreciated.

I posted up a new story for the Halloween contest and the voting is over, so I can 'announce' it now. I finished (and posted) two chapters before the entry deadline and I have the next chapter done, and the final chapter in-progress...

But with a voting score of 6.15 (WTF???) I'm not sure it's worth my time to add anything to this.

I've also started work on the final 'Dragons of the Night' chapters, but at the moment I'm not sure when I'll find the motivation to finish it.

I've been working on Halloween stories for the last two weeks and decided yesterday that I was going to also compile some 'True' Ghost & Paranormal stuff together for the annual Halloween 'True Story' thread on Reddit. So I started listing various items of non-fictional weirdness together and then sorted it out chronologically, so it makes at least some sense.

I might also send the 'bigfoot encounter' bit off to Buckeye Bigfoot for her to read. I didn't think much of the encounter at the time, but compared to most of the 'bigfoot crossed the road in front of me' stories I've heard lately, this story might be a bit more interesting to some listeners.

A couple of stories, like the Alcatraz school trip, I've written about before, on FARK and as comments on several paranormal and High Strangeness discussion boards. At least one of these true stories has also been the topic of discussion on someone's YouTube channel podcast (with permission), but this is the first time I've tried to compile everything all together, in one story.

This story, "My (True) Ghost & Paranormal Stories" is not a fictional one, like the nearly 100 other tales that I have posted here (under several author names). This one has has the additional added benefit of being entirely and completely true.

Last year's hard brush with mortality has made me want to just kick back and tell other's about just a few of the various weird things that have happened in my life, just so that the stories might be remembered, and not lost entirely to time. And what better time to tell 'weird ghost stories' than Halloween!

There's quite a few episodes of WTF-ness listed, but given time, and a clear head, I could easily double the size of this account... but I probably won't. Anything else would probably be too 'meah' to be worth the time to either write or read. I think I covered the main most interesting bits.

Again, these are just a few things that I figuratively and literally wanted to get off my chest before I check-out for good (not soon, I hope). Think of this as telling stories at night with friends around a campfire. You don't need to believe me, but remember some of the weirdest tales are true ones!

More stuff (Halloween) to be posted soon, and the next chapters of a few other pending things have their wheels slowly grinding now too.

Having a day or two to think again about things, and reviewing what I'd posted, I've made a few tweaks today to the 'My (True) Ghost Stories' tale. For starters, I cleaned up a few typos and added more details to several of the encounters (like the bigfoot stories) - things I'd forgotten to add when originally writing this. It's pretty complete now, so I won't add anything new to it from now on.


The next (long overdue) chapter to 'Now is All We Have' is posted. Now, I'm back to working on more Halloween stuff. I had a decent day today and got about eight hours of good writing time in!

Still recovering painfully slowly from my major heart attack. More bad days than good ones still. Even on a day when I feel OK, I tire out extremely easily. My apologies.

I've not been entirely idle. I've been working on "Now is All We Have" intermittently. I've got a few chapters sort of done... but I've wanted a really good day, when I'm not huffing and have a clear head to do a final last review.

Keep nagging me - I've got way too much that needs to be done!

I'm working on ideas for various Halloween story contests (here and elsewhere) and have just enough done that I'm feeling positive about getting at least one of them 'done' and posted somewhere. Meeting the deadline for SOL's contest is going to be a tricky race though. I need at least one 'above average' day and about ten hours of accumulated writing time this week to finish it. I have a very bad history 'just missing' story deadlines, here and at Lit.

A more sure bet is my finishing a Halloween story for Nancy at the Buckeye Bigfoot Youtube channel. She wanted some Sasquatch fiction for a special show, and I've got a pretty decent story idea that's right in her wheelhouse. :)

I suppose I ought to start planning now for Christmas stories too, including my serial 'When the Hunter'.

So much to do!

Chapter Six of Now Is All We Have is uploaded. Again, this (and the next chapter) were both written months ago, before the heart attack. They just needed review and revision.

This chapter probably has the most explicit sex of the story. Anything later on will certainly be much more low-key. I deleted about half of my original draft of this bit of the story as 'too much information' and I've got qualms about half of what is left, but kept it (for now) since I couldn't mental think out a shorter Cliff's Notes version of this. I felt it was important for the narrator's decision-making process, to fully fire his desire for revenge.

I was very uncertain about how to flag story codes for this section. I added a few, but since the narrator was not a participant, I didn't add too many. Let me know if you think that decision is mistaken.

Still working on the next Baad chapter. It's about half done, but the problem is that I keep re-re-writing that first half over again. Hoping to work it a bit late tonight and over the next week.

...Edit...
The next 'Now...' chapters 7 & 8 are also now reviewed and 'done' and chapter 7 has been added to the upload queue for next Wednesday am. I'm going to give chapter 8 a final look later this week and upload it probably next weekend.

This finishes up all of the pages that I wrote earlier. Starting on 'new' chapter 9 after I get the next Baad chapter done.