Crossroads

It has happened.

I have finally arrived at a crossroads that I always knew was coming, but never really allowed myself to think about. My neuropathy has progressed to the point that I am being forced into making life changes, and making decisions on what I can and can't do from this point forward. I have finally reached that stage where I'm that guy at Walmart driving the little electric shopping cart. Even with a rolling walker, I can only gp short distances before my legs get unsteady and I have to sit down to avoid the risk of falling.

And now it appears that time has run out on my hands as well.

I have been having trouble with my hands for a long time, yet up until now I've managed to keep adapting my typing style to account for it. But lately, as the neuropathy has further encroached into my fingers and weakened them, it has started affecting my proprioception as well. I cannot tell exactly where they are on the keyboard without looking at them. Combine that with the fact they don't even move in certain directions anymore, and I have come at last to that  point where more drastic changes must be made.

If I am going to continue my career as an author, I am going to have to attempt to learn how to write a novel with speech recognition software. I simply have no choice. I have been researching the topic, and will soon be buying a copy of Dragon Premium 13 and a microphone. It's a bit of an investment (for me, at least) and I truly hope I don't end up wasting my money… mainly because I have no idea if I can teach myself to write this way.

I'm a painfully old and decrepit dog, and I despise new tricks.

But I have to try.

Unfortunately, this means my schedule and timelines have been shot to pieces (not that I was accomplishing much with these hands lately, anyway). But maybe the time spent educating myself will let me get a fresh perspective on my current projects and make them all the better for it. I hope so. A silver lining here and there is always appreciated.

So wish me luck as I sojourn forward to try to keep this thing going, and maybe that luck will translate into another book or two down the road. If not, at least I can console myself that I tried, and that my final body of work didn’t include anything I'm ashamed of. But for now, I'm still seeing what can be done. 

Internet Toxicity

I was afraid this would happen. To my dismay, it appears I have developed a case of Internet Toxicity. I know I'm naturally vulnerable to it, and I try to avoid it, but it seems this recent elections and the effects i has had on some people have made it unavoidable.

It's no coincidence that I wrote my first novel when the cable company dropped the ball and left me without internet for six weeks. Not wasting hours in constant web surfing certainly helped, but that wasn't the whole story. After a week or two without the non-stop drama of Facebook, forum arguments, and political discussions occupying my thoughts, my focus changed and made it easier for me to concentrate on other things. My creativity improved dramatically. My mind (especially when I was in "idle mode" while driving or doing other automatic tasks) now spent it's time musing on story concepts and situations as opposed to politics or other internet driven drama. It made being productive a whole lot more possible.

When I got my internet back, I learned I had to self limit. I needed to avoid the trap of wasting time continuously clicking that next link. It was destroying my attention span, and starting to eat up that "idle mode" I had started using for plot and character development purposes. So, after some experimentation, I found a happy medium that allowed me my internet fix without undue damage to my creativity and attention span.

Unfortunately, I have recently been forced to confront the fact that recent events, and the reactions to those events, have undone the balance I strove for. Despite efforts to avoid it, I have been poisoned by the current state of the internet, and I need to focus on recovery.

So that only leaves one solution.

I will have to drastically cut back on my internet usage, especially at Facebook (I will likely budget fifteen minutes at the end of the day for that so my friends don't think I hate them), and will have to confine my online activities to research and business. Also, I will especially need to curtail the amount of time I spend online in general. Time spent clicking that unending chain of links can be better used reading the works of other authors, or maybe even spent outdoors. Things that will help the old brain get used to focusing on things for longer than a few minutes at a time again. And things that will help me mentally detoxify.

I'm going to hate this, but my previous experience with kicking a twenty-year smoking habit means I know an addiction when I see one...and that means it needs to be done.

Time to go read a book.

Then maybe I can start writing one.

Crazy Nate's Big Giveaway!

Well, maybe not so much “crazy” as “intellectually sketchy”, but we won’t go there. The important thing is that it felt like a good time to have one of those free ebook thingies that authors do from time to time. Therefore I decided I would make all of my ebooks on Amazon free, but not all at the same time. Gotta mix it up a little.  Can’t make it too simple, right?

So below is the list of dates each ebook will be free…

The Ways of Khrem Jan 16-20

Nightwalk Jan 23-25

Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen Jan 25-27

Spiderstalk Jan 30 – Feb 1

Shades Feb 1-3

Dead Stop Feb 6-8

Nightwalk 2 Feb 8-10

I hope all of you enjoy them and read them in good health. Have a Happy 2017!