In October I had $1100 in vet bills (and I lost Marcus), food poisoning, and a very bad cold that has left me in bed for a week and that I’m still recovering from. Now I have a cat with a bad ear infection and aural hematoma to contend with, so the rest of the year is probably going to be garbage.

Anyway! I finished writing a thing while I was drugged up with NyQuil and posted it today for Patrons. Surprise!

It’s not a story, in that there is no standard structure or anything. It’s just writing I was doing for myself that I thought I’d provide for patrons as they await the next book.

Next is the new River story coming for Christmas–I have to do a revision pass before I send it for copyedits (preferably when I’m not drugged up on NyQuil). Funny thing about dipping back into that world–last night the whole final story bloomed in my head, the one I want to do after Wolfe that’s set about a decade+ after the initial series.

I haven’t the time–too much else to write, and I haven’t done the Wolfe revisions yet anyway–but it’s weird how something sneaks up on you. For now, the image of River climbing into a blind to attack a hunter and threaten him for being on her property–and then stealing his rifle–will remain in my brain.

He had a very long name. Most of my pets do, but that was the first time I gave one a long involved name. As a teen, my favourite book was Donna Gillespie’s The Light Bearer, and Marcus Arrius Julianus was the male lead. That was where I got the name from.

A big name for a very small cat, but he was a polydactyl; anyone with that many toes needed a big name.

As a kitten, Marcus was very tiny and in a house with many cats and dogs, so for the first few weeks he was kept in the bathroom and visited frequently, but that must’ve stunted his social development because he became a very awkward cat.

He lived with my mother for most of his life, and the cats were in the basement away from the dogs. After I moved to her town, he went missing one day–it turned out he had just gone next door to hang out under the neighbour’s porch…but he could not be caught. Because he would just sit there and stare at her, and would dart under and hide when she went to pick him up.

Worried for his safety, I offered to take him–at that point I only had one other cat, my dog, and my rabbit–and he settled in…still awkward. He slept at the end of the bed and I could pet him, but he wasn’t an affectionate lap cat by any stretch.

That did change over the years, however. One of my paranoid fears is not being able to evacuate my pets during a fire, so I was determined to get him used to being picked up in case of an emergency. He tolerated it after a lot of practice.

And the more I watched him, the more I found he wanted attention, he just wasn’t sure how to seek it out. He would sit a few feet away and stare at me throughout the day; if I sat on the floor and reached out, he wouldn’t run but let me pet him. Little by little, the gap got smaller and smaller until he reached a point of head-bopping me when he wanted to be pet.

When I got sick in 2014, I was pretty much in bed all the time for six months. And though all of the cats loved that particular turn of events, it was Marcus who became my constant companion. Though never a lap cat, I found he enjoyed curling up against me while I lay on my side, and it was during that time we really seemed to bond.

I’d be remiss in not mentioning: he was fastidious in grooming himself, resulting in large piles of fur all over the place and often stuck hanging from his mouth like a beard.

He was not a cat for pilling/medicating, but managed to do pretty well for the past year on a kidney diet with my other elderly cat. Besides his kidneys not being great, his liver was starting to struggle, and his heartbeat was all out of whack. He lost his vision about five weeks ago but continued to manage until it became too much for his kidneys and daily sub-q fluids wouldn’t go over well long-term.

Marcus Arrius Julianus, the small cat with the long name, passed peacefully with veterinary assistance yesterday.

The house isn’t much changed on the surface; he had a very quiet, subtle presence. But that silence had a weight and was a constant, and I feel its lack quite acutely.

Two weeks of holidays flew by to the point that I don’t really feel like I had a holiday. I have tremendous requests on my time and commitments to things in all aspects of my life right now, so much so that I’m really struggling to maintain it all. I’m looking at taking another week off in November just to get some cleaning done that I had meant to the past couple of days. (Also a week scheduled in February obviously.)

My eldest cat–he’s nineteen–suddenly went blind a few days before my holidays started. He has a whole host of issues according to his last exam–his kidneys aren’t great, his liver’s starting to have issues, his heart is wonky–but he’s been adjusting well to blindness, and I had a Pawbo camera set up in my room to monitor him while I was away. He’s managing pretty well but needs frequent meals of wet food, which I have to keep the others away from to give him a chance to eat, so life remains pretty much a circus with cats. As long as his “in and out” is normal, he’s grooming himself, and he’s not showing signs of discomfort, he should be okay for a while.

I’ve been in the worse shape of my life, so I’m building on the current fitness regime I started a couple of months ago and getting a bit more disciplined with it. I’m also back on the vegan train so I will be pretty cranky for a couple of weeks while I adjust to not having cheese.

Freelancing has become crazy busy the last six months. Which is a good thing but I’m so booked that when I have a health issue, it throws everything in the air. There is a chance I might not have to work through Christmas this year, which would be a first. Today is my first day back and I hit the ground running, but prior to my vacation I worked myself to the point I had crippling carpal tunnel pain, which I’m going to try to avoid recurring this week.

And then there’s the writing–which is not getting prioritized as I’d like and I’m going to I’m going to take a hard look at my schedule and see how I can rearrange things (and what I can cut). I got the new Zara story off to the Beta of Awesome, it’s kind of a nightmare in the first bare-bones draft form but it’ll get there–I’m looking at a wide release maybe late November depending on how long revisions take.

Saturday night I finished up a new novella I’ve mentioned on Patreon and Alchemy Red but not really here yet–it’s sort of Demons of Oblivion: The Next Generation, a spinoff that stands alone but previous series knowledge would certainly enrich the reading of it. It’s even more of a mess and I skipped part of the climax entirely. After it simmers a bit longer, I’ll go back and fix it–right now I’m not even feeling a sense of accomplishment, all I can think is “Dear god, there’s still so much more to be done.”

I poked a little at Livi 5–still sitting at 60K, I know all the things I need to write, it’s just a matter of getting all the words out. I think I’ve had enough of a break that I can go back and get some work done on it–a little distance always helps.

There’ll be a quarterly state of a union in a few weeks when I better project some upcoming release dates. For now, consider this a check in–not dead, wish I was still on holidays, currently trying to do all the things., more soon!