Blog Post No. 539
I’m feeling a little disconnected right now. It’s April and for the previous five years in April I had a book come out in the Synthetic Albatross Series. This year I don’t and it’s very strange. Normally, this would be the time when I would be scrambling to get the final copy to the printer, or anxiously waiting for the review copy to come in so I could see what horrible mistake I missed (costing me more money) or what kind of horrible state the printing (or binding, or positioning) would be in. Not that I’m doing any of that in 2023.
Before I sat down to write this week’s post, I wasn’t 100% sure what I was going to write about. I had a few half-thought-out ideas, but nothing that felt strong enough for a post. Then, I went through some old posts to determine exactly when I started the Invasion Novel (because I’m not done talking about that thing, yet and won’t be for some time). Turns out, the first post where I talk about actually starting the novel was in 
Welcome to the end of 2022. As is tradition, I’ll write a nice long post looking back on the year when I get to the year-end of the blog in mid January. This post is all about looking to the future. The distant future of 2023, to be exact. Will there finally be flying cars and food in pill form? I have no idea, but I kind of hope not. I’ll settle for better healthcare and cheaper groceries. I’d also really like to finally get out of the house more and specifically start attending events again. I’ve been writing 
I didn’t intend to wait this long to write a 
I have a very minor dilemma that actually isn’t a dilemma. I want to do something and I know I shouldn’t and I’ve learned through years of inactivity that there is an obvious solution. Even thought I know that, I still have this want. I think the want is really an amalgamation of fatigue, stress, fear, and maybe a bit of boredom. It’s the worst kind of want to act upon and I know that and to be honest, I already know I’m not going to act on it, but it’s still there while I write this. 
I’m a little embarrassed at how long it took me to get back into the edits on the Invasion Novel, but I’ve finally started to go over 
This is going to be another post about the day job. I know that I’ve talked a lot about it in the past year or so, but part of writing is all the stuff you do that allows/prevents you from writing. I have a day job to pay for general living expenses since I’m currently not making any money writing. Having expenses paid for by having a job that’s not nine-to-five allows me to write. On the other hand, the job is sometimes more than nine-to-five for weeks at a time and while I’m at work, it’s not always easy or advisable to not do work stuff, so it also prevents me from writing.
Just before I started to get back into editing the Invasion Novel (see 
If you thought I was done talking about the Invasion Novel just because I finished it (and maybe suggested that I wouldn’t be talking about it as much) you were dead wrong. I’ve just been in a holding pattern waiting for Christian to wrap up the first review of the chunky book and working on short stories in the interim. (I’m just finishing off the last one that I had started since I’d like to submit it for a collection at the end of the month).
It’s been about a year since I was first called back to the day job. I was off for over a year from mid March 2020 to August of 2021. I feel like I did alright in that time off. I released the third and fourth novellas in 
Ben Van Dongen 