There have been times over the past month when I wasn't really sure. Times when I'd wake up at night gasping for breath, my mouth so dry I had to pour water in it, and my lungs coughing up crap I didn't want to see. And it wasn't enough to have this happen at night. I'd be working away during the day and suddenly gasp as I realized I hadn't been breathing. Panic and hyperventilation set in as I tried to get lungs filled with air. /sad story
Went to a doctor Friday and she said there was no pneumonia, even though there was fluid in my lungs and a bronchial infection. Put me on good drugs, including an inhaler and I've now gotten two successful full nights of sleep. I'm thrilled and while it's not at a peak yet, my energy seems to be returning. And I only had to pay $350 for drugs! Medicare plan D would have cost three times that and I'd still have a co-pay.
So, I'm still working. Chapters of Double Team (Book 5 of The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins) are moving back and forth between my editors and me. It might have turned a little dark as I struggled to breathe, but it's beginning to return to the light. In case you are keeping track, I'm now working on Part XVIII, chapter 221. I think there are another ten chapters to go in the story, but I've been fooled before and my editors think there's another whole book to go. Sheesh!
In the next couple of weeks, I hope to get my book, The Volunteer, up on SOL (Wayzgoose). The big issue I'm having is how to divide it up into postable units since it was written as a single long (55,000-word) narrative-exactly the kind of thing SOL tells authors not to do.
The Volunteer is a journey inside the head of a chronically homeless man-in a less politically correct age we'd have called him a hobo. Gerald Good, known now only as G2, volunteered to trade places with a homeless man, believing he would quickly work his way back to prosperity. Ten years later… twenty… thirty… find G2 alone in his head and his boxcar.
A story without chapters, we follow whatever G2 thinks of as his present at the moment. In delving into his non-linear life, perhaps we can discover what separates the chronically homeless with nothing from 'normal' people who constantly collect and consume.
So, that was depressing. I think I need to write a good sex scene. Jacob and Rachel, here I come!