Sadly, I only managed to get 1.33 chapters of Darwin & the Beast Collector edited.  It was a challenge too.  The full chapter took a whole weekend because it was bigger than I realized and had a lot of continuity sections that required checking.  This was hard to pull off when I had so many other things to do.  Before anyone says anything, I did an hour of Pokemon each day after I got some editing and other stuff done.  Then, it was back to the grindstone.

The obstacles boil down to two things.  The first is that I had several chores and errands that needed to get done.  The food shopping trips kept multiplying too since the big supermarket in my area is gone.  So, I would go to one place and get what I could, head home, and go out later to another in the opposite direction.  I also discovered some of the ingredients I thought were already here had gone bad or weren’t what I expected.  This is on top of the cooking and cleaning, so I was juggling everything for an entire weekend and wearing myself down by the time I reach the complicated editing.

Another problem is that the pollen count is high, which was a respiratory disaster for me this week.  It’s hard to focus when I have a constant burning in my throat and lungs if I’m outside or just came back in.  Been like this since I moved back to New York from Florida and it’s even led to upper respiratory infections if I ignore it for too long.  Of course, the rain came to knock the pollen down faster and I realized all of the allergy meds had expired 2 years ago.  Ended up medicating myself every morning to make it to work until Thursday night when it caught up to me.  Didn’t help that I went from an afterschool basketball game to my son’s chorus concert then shopping for the medication and finally getting to dinner around 9:30 PM.  I tried to get more editing down on Friday while I recovered, but my head was too dizzy for me to do more than 1/3 of the chapter.

Today is set aside for my son since this is really the only full day I get with him for a long time.  He’s with his mom tomorrow for obvious reasons and then the next two weekends, so I want to make this one count.  I’m sure I’ll find a way to finish the partially done chapter before Monday.  Though, I also have to mow the lawn before the rains come back and cook a dinner that will double as a few lunches.  I need to get better about time management when I have so much on my plate.  That or I should accept that I won’t always get a full chapter edited or written in a day.  I’m still so used to be highly productive, so doing a little feels like failure.  Yes, I know every little bit helps, but those who have followed me long enough should get it.  I went from writing multiple chapters in a week to struggling to edit even one within the same timespan.  Hurts.

Well, I can’t say I was entirely unproductive throughout the week.  Not just talking about pollen-infused grossness too.  I’m working on doing the blog posts for the summer, which will be me going back to the beginning of the blog and reviving some ancient posts.  I think that will be a lot of fun to see what young me though.  I’ll add some 2025 thoughts at the bottom as well.  This will be along with the usual random Sundays, goal post Saturdays, poetry Thursdays, and Teaser Tuesdays.

Speaking of Teaser Tuesdays, I’m going to be adding announcements at the bottom of those in regards to my price drop.  At some point this month, I’m going to drop the price of my single novels (Legends, Nytefall, Bedlam, and Ichabod) to 99 cents.  My goal is to take a day before Memorial Day Weekend and lower everything.  Probably be next weekend since I didn’t get to it on my sick day.  Using Teaser Tuesdays and making occasional solo posts are all I can do aside from mentioning it on Facebook.  My social media presence is lacking and I don’t have the time to build things up on a new medium like Bluesky . . . Is that the new one?

For anyone wondering why or preparing to give me the ‘price your worth’ speech, I have been thinking about this for a while.  Money is tight for many out there and I’m a no-name author.  $3 on someone like me is a lot, but 99 cents can be a consideration.  It makes me think of old dime novels that were cranked out, but sold cheap to help them spread.  I write escapist tales of magic and action anyway.  I’m inspired by Tolkien for trying to build a grand world with epic tales, but I’m also inspired by the action-oriented fun of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories.  So, I want to make these more affordable in a time when people don’t have a lot of spending money.  Will people choose to give me a chance?  No idea and it’s arrogant of me to think this will be big.  Yet, I think it’s more arrogant for me to believe someone who is living paycheck to paycheck will see my eBooks worthy of $3 when they could spend more on an author they already know.

Anyway, what are my goals of the week?

1. Time with son today.
2. Mow the lawn.
3. Finish more summer blog posts.
4. Edit more Darwin & the Beast Collector.
5. Start changing book pricing.
6. Cooking.
7. Pokemon Go on good days and biking on rainy days.
8. Take Claritin in the morning.
9. Watch more of ‘The Good Place’.  It’s fun and quirky.