This past weekend was one of my more dismal working weekends - although the work had nothing to do with it.
A series of family emergencies, starting Thursday and continuing through Sunday - along with a migraine Friday and Saturday and an annual physical during COVID with a migraine when I already have a phobia of medical stuff added to the challenge of the past few days.
As I was signing off at eight o'clock for a shower and a Korean drama with Rebekah, I received the following "telegram" from Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara, i.e. the world's first Irish vampire.
So I picked up the phone, and we talked for more than an hour, the first conversation since July.
Well, wouldn't you?
The "telegram" is below my rambling, the second most serious piece of correspondence I've received from him in a decade. But it's not all gloom and doom - if you read to the end (Please do. I laughed out loud).
The "chapters" to which Ed's referring are his final drafts to Ruthless.
The Thanksgiving deadline is when he plans to send them all - because I plan to spend Thanksgiving weekend doing the final heavy edits.
An interesting point came up during the conversation. I'll share that tomorrow.
Dear Goddess,
I have been very sick the past week, and unable to get tested because of the surge and have been "sequestering" so I don't spread whatever I have.
Nonetheless, I've committed to retiring from the news papers on...drum roll, please: Feb 13, 2021. Calkins Day will be my last day. Please do not lick the plastic bag your newspaper comes in.
Anyway, the rereading of these chapters has encouraged me. My wife read the versions sent and thought the book was OK. This might not sound encouraging, but she's been warning me that she thought she would hate it.
A brother is also reading the book...to hate it, of course, and he loves it. Even I am warming up to it!
But, still, the self-sabotage that marks my long attempts is in full play. I can not find a complete version of the chapter "Kiss, Kill, or Marry." If you have a copy of what I sent you, could you please send it back? I do have the entire novel, unedited by me, in hard copy, so its not the end of the world, although in my sickened state, I feel like it is.
I will make that deadline of Thanksgiving, but if I don't, I'm hoping you could edit without my trying first. My wife was sick for a few days, without a fever. Now she's mostly healthy and has been working on the interior art which is all mirror-based (much to my delight).
We may not be able to have a signing on Calkins Day because of COVID-19. If it happens that way, I am positive that it will prove advantageous in ways only our Maker understands, but I'd like it to be His decision and not the decision of my fears.
Ruthlessly yours,
Ed Covid Calkins
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