David R. Michael's Blog

UNINVITED (Heidi Sees Book #3) is now available in trade paperback!

Available at Amazon and (I’m sure at some point) other places that sell books.

-David

An outdoor bench, to be specific, for my backyard garden.

Last week I realized I had accumulated enough scrap and leftover pressure-treated (PT) lumber that I could build a simple bench. The scraps and leftovers were of varying ages and silvering, some going back to 2023, I think, when I built my garden shed. And they’ve just been accumulating in the backyard. Idle lumber is the devil’s tinderbox, maybe?

The original design was all 2x4s, but I had a left over 2×6 from … something? So I adapted.

I won’t build this design again. It’s one I found on the web after a bit of searching, and it looked OK. But now that I’ve built it, I don’t like how the back supports are put together. Also, the back is too short for me (6′ 2″) to sit comfortably for very long. Should I decide I need another bench for my garden, I’ll dig deeper. Or design my own.

Still, it was fun to spin up the miter saw and build something new, on an impulse.

-David

TAG ALONG (Heidi Sees Book #2) is now available in trade paperback!

Available on Amazon (and eventually other places).

-David

I (finally) released a Trade Paperback edition of HEIDI SEES.

Available on Amazon (and eventually other places).

The other books in the series are on the way!

-David

Sometimes what happens, good or bad, just becomes your life from that moment forward.

-David

The last couple years (technically only the last 18 months, but it *feels* like at least 2 years, or maybe 5), life has been full of those “slings and arrows” that Hamlet whined about. In my experience, though, they’ve felt a lot more like body blows. Straight-up gut-punches.

Here is a summary of the last 18 months:

May 2024 – Body blow.
June-July 2024 – Fast, hard jabs to chin.
August – November 2024 – Gut punch, followed by a flurry of boots to the head–and at least one kick to the groin.
December 2024 – Almost a respite. Some time to recover–
January – February 2025 – Gut punch, pile driver, elbow drop.
March – April 2025 – Flurry of blows.
May 2025 – Another fucking gut punch. (Summer 2025 – Additional flurries of wow-this-blows.
Autumn 2025 – Black eye. (But at least I’m re-employed; yay?)

The hits, they just keep on coming.

Maybe this is par for the course. The older you get, the more you’ve stuck your chin out there, the more chances life, the universe, and disinterested fate get to take swings at you (and your loved ones).

My point isn’t “woe is me”–tho, lemme assure you, there is woe, more than a little despair, and even some gnashing of teeth.

Instead I’ve been thinking how I should probably come up with a faster way to “process” all of this. Get back up on my feet and stick my chin out there again. Less staring, stunned into the near distance. More getting back in motion.

Rope-a-dope sucks, but sometimes it’s all you got.

But when you do get a breather, and you’re barely standing up, and you’re half-braced for the next punch to the mouth to interrupt your plans–

I don’t know that anyone would blame you (or me) for curling up in a ball on the floor and just waiting it out. But goddamnit I’m not done yet. And I’m too old now to be doing a lot of waiting.

So I’m working on getting better at getting on with the ticking after the ass-whooping.

I feel like I’ve been getting more than enough practice in.

So here’s hoping.

-David

You can read Heidi Sees (Book #1) for free on my newsletter:

Click here to read Heidi Sees (Book #1).

-David

I started a new job this week. That removes a bit of stress.

I’m still working on Heidi Sees #4, and I have another Bauxy panel started. Progress on both will likely be a bit slow while I figure out my new daily routine. But they’re happening.

-David

Jamie Derouen’s pampered life as scion of a nouveau riche New Orleans family is coming apart like the plastic beads of a Mardi Gras necklace.

Ashley Turner, the man she loved, was murdered by her father, torn from her arms and taken to the swamps, the latest sacrifice to appease an angry god. A year later, Ashely has come back from the dead, horribly changed, his mind broken, and now her father has disappeared. Jamie can feel the eyes of the god looking at her, hear its laughter in the thunder of the Gulf Coast’s spring storms.

Can she escape her father’s legacy? What will she have to give up to have a chance at a new life?

Published by Four Crows Landing.

Available from Amazon and everywhere ebooks are sold!