This is an update, and it’s going to be a rather negative one.  Feel free to skip if you like.  This post is personal and has nothing to do with books or fiction writing.  Academic writing will come into play.

My wife had her lumpectomy on the 2nd.  Everything went fine, and she came home that day.  We will get the results of the pathology report on Wednesday, the day after tomorrow.  My in-laws came up from where they live, a city three hours drive away.  My father-in-law stayed through Saturday, the fifth.  It was the last time I ever saw him.  My mother-in-law stayed through the next week.

I went to Costa Rica on Sunday the sixth.  This was a business trip that had been in the works since before my wife was diagnosed with cancer.  The university at which I’m employed opened a branch campus there last fall.  Physics was being taught for the first time this spring, and I was helping set up a lab.

While I was gone:  Monday night the sewer line under the house backed up; my wife had to call the plumber on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, my mother-in-law was running errands in my wife’s car (formerly known as the Out of Town Car) when a guy ran a red light and hit her.  No one was hurt, but the car isn’t going to be going out of town until the insurance is settled and repairs are done.  My car wouldn’t start later that day for some reason, but it works fine now.  Fortunately my son has a car.

Thursday night I opened my work email to followup on a prior conversation with my department head. I found an email from a sales rep at a textbook publisher.  I am coauthor on our lab manuals.  The sales rep claimed she had met me and my coauthor before.  Maybe, maybe not; I don’t remember her.  The email was addressed to both of us, and the sales rep told us that they had taken our lab manual, scanned it, added some figures, and printed it.  They had also created an ebook version.  They had had a meeting with some of the faculty earlier in the day and discussed bundling their version of our manual with their text book. She was sending us a copy for our convenience.

Uh, no.  This was all news to me and my coauthor.  This was done without our knowledge or consent.  And we won’t give it.  I said as much in a sharply worded email (after I cooled off enough to maintain a level of semi-professionalism) to the sales rep.  She had CC’d three other people at her publishing house.  I made sure they were included in my response.  I haven’t heard a response from them yet.  If anyone knows a good intellectual property attorney in west Texas, please let me know.  I hope it won’t come to that, but I want to be prepared.

I thought my life couldn’t get any worse until Friday evening when I was packing to fly home at dark-thirty the next day and got a text from my wife telling me my father-in-law had passed away.  This was unexpected, as he was supposed to have come back and picked up my mother-in-law over the weekend.

Obviously, this has been hard on everyone.  Because of some issues with family members being able to get here for the funeral, it won’t be held until the weekend.

I don’t know when I’ll get back to posting on a regular basis.  It probably won’t be for at least a week or two, although there may be the occasional Save My Sanity post.  I will be back, but don’t be surprised if there is some radio silence for a bit.

As you might guess, I am not having Happy New Year.

My wife had her lumpectomy this morning.  We had to be at the hospital by 6:00, and I think we were ten or fifteen minutes early.  She was given a room in pre-op.  After some waiting, they sent her to radiology to have some type of dye injected into the lymph nodes.  I asked if she was going to glow in the dark.  That would be an interesting side job, being a living night light to a child in a wealthy family, don’t you think?

Shortly after she got back, the anesthesiologist came in, went over some things, and they wheeled her out.  I went down to the waiting room and hung out with my in-laws.  There was one scary moment, and it was only a moment, when I got a call from the operating room.  They were simply calling to let me know things were going well.  Once I realized there wasn’t a problem, I appreciated the update.

The surgeon removed the tumor and the three lymph nodes closest to it.  The whole thing took a little over an hour an a half.  We were home by 2:00.  My wife is doing well, and so far hasn’t experienced much pain.  They told her that will change tomorrow.

My wife and I would like to thank everyone for their concern, well-wishes, thoughts, and prayers.

Happy New Year, everyone!

People tell me I should be making resolutions.

Why?  Aren’t most resolutions broken within days/hours/minutes?  Why would I want to set myself up for failure?

Still, in the interest of going along with the herd, here are a few of my resolutions.

1.  I resolve to write more this year.  I resolve to finish what I write, including projects that have been back-burnered and new projects.
2. I resolve to put something up for sale before the year is over.  In other words, I resolve to start self-publishing.
3. I resolve to read more.  I resolve to read what I want when I want.
4. I resolve to not read only works by women/gays/left-handed redheaded stepchildren/[insert group du jour here].  I resolve to not read books based solely on the author’s gender/skin color/plumbing/ethnicity/mental illness/sociopolitical agenda, no matter how critically acclaimed the book/story/screed/ransom note is.  OTOH, I may not read anything by any of these if some nag starts lecturing me on why I should based solely on the reasons listed above.
5. I resolve to read what I want when I want and resolve to choose my reading material based solely on story.

I think that about covers it.  Oh, wait, I left one thing out.

I resolve to try to be less cranky.

In past years I’ve ended the year with a recap of what I thought were the best books of the year and possibly a summary of any key events.

This past year family and work responsibilities prevented me from reading as much as I usually do.  On top of that, much of what I did read was older stuff.  There wasn’t a lot of new work that appealed to me.  A good portion of what did is still in my TBR pile.

So this year, I’m going to reverse things.  I’ll let you tell me what I should have read.  Please list any works, short or long, in the comments that you think stood out or were required reading.