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[As usual, three weeks lag here, if you aren’t reading this on my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/blazeward). If you’d like your news fresher, and the monthly Anti-Stodgy/Redneck Chef newsletter, all I ask is a buck to help keep the lights on around here.]

Gotten over August, I think. It was an ugly one, but not bad.

Just, as noted elsewhere, utterly exhausting. August anyway, plus the barbecue, then the Con, then the recovery.

I managed to not bite anybody in August. Most of you have no idea how important that is.

It is also the start of fall, so a lot of fruit to deal with. Drying it, fermenting it, distilling it in some cases. Took the leftover watermelon and added pineapple to make a wine and brandy it. All the yellow plums are fermenting now and will brandy soon. Got white lightning in a glass jar with oak flavoring pieces added to give it color and flavor.

Even making more shrub now, before all the grapes and apples ripen over the next few weeks, plus Nik and Bry are sitting on eight pounds of cherries they are supposedly getting back to me at some point as booze.

Gonna be a brandy kind of fall. Maybe with hot chocolate when the weather turns.

And shrub, because a hot summer.

Writing.

Hell, I’ve lost count at this point. Tasker is done. Phil and Alison is done. Still have open stories for Zach (8 & 9 I think without looking). Still have open erotica arc.

I am writing what I think will be the last chapter of Ollie 4. Actually hit that and took a break to write this, because I needed time to process how it ended. This is not a car-chase-and-gunfight kind of series, so the climax is entirely emotional and social, but I think it works. And the actual ending, several chapters later, needs to bring it all back to rest and circle it in to resolution.

At the same time, one of my endings actually leaves it all hanging out there, open for people to fill in their own stories, until such time as I actually circle back and write it. All of my series tend to end with enough of an open door that I could go back and write more. Science Officer and Jessica both got that. Captain Daring didn’t, but people have demanded more and I seriously don’t know where to take it in such a way that doesn’t throw out everything we already did for something else.

And I’m past it in my head.

Having finished Heather and about to finish Ollie, I’m facing forward. Heather has two spin-offs, one in the very short term and a second that is the actual sequel series (one of two for Veronika, as I’ve gotten into the details) building up to something that was promised all the way back in Auberon itself. And regularly hinted at since, but only a handful of you have read Heather to understand. (Phil contains all the clues.)

Because I’m having a lot of fun with the RAN books and might actually finish them off at some point, weird as that is to consider.

But I also want to tell Autumn’s story, and it takes place in 15004, or about 1600 years after Jessica. Because Suvi is the Last of the Immortals, and I can carry her forward through history as a narrator. Just gotta fill in the middle bits before permanently hopping into the future.

Busy tonight, so you’ll get Zach 002 tomorrow, I think. Back to normal week, but this is a busy Tuesday and I don’t have to spend all my effort accommodating everyone else.

So there will be more words. More worlds. More stuff.

Hope you folks are all tied in for the next phase, because Holden and the gang will be coming up soon.

shade and sweet water,

b

West of the Mountains, WA

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