I bought a van. Well, traded my hybrid in on it, along with mucho-promises of dinero in the form of 69 months of payments for it. I’ve had it a few days and it…works. Not a mini-van, per se. A mini-cargo van, a Nissan NV200. It is soooo rustic in trim compared to my loaded C-MAX that I have an urge to ugly-cry when I remember I must use a KEY to unlock the door or start the engine. And it’s a 2017, so yeah, one year shy of the mandatory rear view cameras, shoulda bought this year’s model I guess. Still, it only had 400 miles on it, so yay!

06:56. Wake up, get up, shit, shower. Pop the vitamins and meds to force my body to go on. Get to the kitchen before I can debate the merits of disappearing. Prefill the coffee cups and French press with boiling water. Grind the coffee. Empty the press, pour in the coffee, fill it up. Think about my breakfast options, chose, like I always do for the egg on a piece of toast. Get the toast in. Grab butter, cheese, creamer and ketchup.

Well the past couple of weeks has seen the traffic to ctales grow tremendously! All from Russia, the Czech Republic and the Ukraine, mostly. I'm sure it was all bots and though I've done my best they make use up all my available memory again at some point in the future.  It is pretty much a denial of service attack if they are continuously trying to create accounts or log into non-existent accounts.

The blog has been giving me headaches recently. Out of date and such and won't allow me to make posts, see? This is why we use word press!

I have posted a new chapter to the Shiner's story, 'Reset', it is ready to read here:
Reset Chapter 6

Writing that is. I am sure it has to do with my mood and general outlook on life, the thing that is killing my writing productivity these days. The alternatives are too harsh to ponder, really; I got lazy. I am uninspired. I’m working like a slave at my day job and on the house.

I’ve been finding it hard to find time to write lately. When I have ‘free’ time it seems to turn into ‘me’ time. It feels like I get to the end of a day and have wasted another few hours of potential. It’s not just that either, there are so many good distractions and right now I am in need of distracting. At the end of the day I make choices and some days, weeks and months those choices are not the ones that lead me to happiness.

It seems like January has been a busy one, yet I've accomplished very little. I did a few words on TZC6 and some on Shine On, but not nearly as much as I had planned.  Planning versus life. I have heard tell when man makes plans, God laughs. Not I am one of the faithful, but I like the sentiment. 

Smashwords is one of the venues that I sell my books through and from Christmas Day through New Year's Day all of my books will be half off and Shiners will be free for the taking:

The Zombie Chronicles: Outbreak (no coupon code needed, this one is always free at Smashwords)

Shiners Coupon Code: EY100

I am not making much progress on TZC6 this month, at least not as much as I wanted. I figure I'll come in closer to 12 thousand words than 30, which is a bummer, but December has always sucked for me, in terms of writing. I should have set a more modest goal. January I will keep the goal of writing 30,000 words again, less than a thousand a day and completely doable...if I don't get sidetracked. The holidays have always played havoc with my life, at least since I grew up.