Took Daughter #1 off to college yesterday.  A mere two hours away.  Still:  someone who has been in my home everyday (yes, yes… field trips, sleep-overs…) for the past seventeen years suddenly… isn’t.

It’s a hollow silence; a fake peace.  Much of her stuff is still in her room and bathroom.  Her dog – who is now de facto our dog – goes from window to window with sighs.  This, coming on the heels of the raw close of “Crosses & Doublecrosses” was enough to make a special trip to the liquor store for some summer gin.  I drink a little to write; I drink a lot to make this world go away.

As I always quote:  “you can get used to hanging if you hang long enough,” so too will the ache of her relocation pass.  Time, after all, wounds all heals.  In the interim, unable to write, I took some assessment of my collexion of short stories from MachCiv.  Of those I can use (not in someone else’s sandbox), there are six, totaling 20.6k words.  One of them, the story of how Arpad and Lily meet, fell in love, get married, is currently 11k but I need to add at least 8k to complete it.  Emma’s story will need to be doubled or cut.  And, there is at least one if not two more in mind:  when sergeant John Brunelli from both of Nichole 5’s books comes to Japan as an old man to fulfill his promise to see her again; that, and a short about the machine Ninon, who you will meet in “C&DC”… who loves to fly to the stars.

That gives me one book that’s – hopefully! – less than a month from publication.  Another raw manuscript complete that should be out by Thanksgiving or Christmas.  And a collexion of Machine Civilization shorts (with commentary before each!) sometime mid to late winter 2020.

“Doin’s better than thinkin’.”