OldBillyBob: Blog

I recently got an email from someone wondering if I'm still around. Well yes, I am. I'm actually doing a little writing (if an average 12 words a day for the past year qualifies) and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to finish something and get it posted.

Thank you for your patience.

I'm not talking about recent rainfall in Texas, though I'm happy for them. I'm talking about my personal writing drought.

I was doing OK at cranking out a story now and then up until the pandemic hit. Suddenly there were too many people around my house. My wife got furloughed from her job and eventually took an early retirement. Our son, a teacher up to then, got shunted out of his job, too, so he moved back in with us.

Having them around isn't a burden. I actually enjoy their company. Having them always around killed the privacy I like to have for my writing and I just couldn't get a long enough stretch by myself to concentrate on a project until the past month or so.

Now, the wife is doing some consulting in her area of expertise and staying busy in the other end of the house, the boy is building a niche as an online tutor and getting busier all the time, and I'm left with long periods of time where I can peck at the keyboard and create some porn.

I have several lengthy stories that are starting to come together -- I didn't say I didn't write anything, I only said I couldn't concentrate on a project long enough at a time to do any good. I did start a few things when the ideas filled my head. -- Those long projects will show up here before long, I'm sure.

In the meantime, I will be posting a short new story very soon called "All You Have To Do Is Ask."

I'm not dead, nor am I even sick. I am, however, seriously inconvenienced by current circumstances. When the pandemic began, my family all ended up in the house full time. My wife was forced into early retirement by the downturn in her companies fortunes, my son was no longer teaching in the classroom and my style has been cramped ever since. I did manage to finish "Things Get Better" last summer before I got kicked out of my home office so the boy could tutor on line but I've been unable to settle into a serious writing 'groove' ever since.

That said, I've been plunking at a few stories here and there, including the two chapters that would complete "All A-Twitter" and rid my page of the dreaded yellow bar of incompleteness. None of the stories is making fast progress, though. Maybe by the end of the year, I'll post something...

... or ends, as the case may be. The final chapter of "Things Get Better" has been posted. Voting and comments are enabled. Feedback has been mostly positive other than a few of the 'burn the bitch' crowd not getting the story they wanted to read. Meh. Let 'em write their own if they don't like mine. Then I can one-bomb them like they're doing to me.

Thanks for hanging in there. Thanks for the votes and the comments. I'm working on several other stories but who knows how long it will take for any of them to be finished.

"Things Get Better" is into its penultimate chapter now. Things are turning the corner for Ron and things are actually starting to look up. Chapter four, the final part, will post on Wednesday with comments and voting enabled shortly thereafter. Thanks for reading and thanks for the feedback.