I have been neglecting my website for far too long, and so I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things. I started by doing some minor tweaking and cleaning up of links and such. I still need to make sure that my various links are still active.
One of the first things I’ve updated is the Works by Clients page, where visitors can see the titles I’ve had the pleasure to do editing for.
One of those works is a history of animation and anime, a very thoroughly researched book.
Other works include: a science fiction series (actually a long, single epic tale), The Ark of the Chimeron; a psychology book about dealing with being the child of poor parenting, Free to Run the Race; a supernatural thriller titled Dark Lenny.
As noted in a previous post, I’d written a satirical short story The Siege of the White House in November, and immediately put it up on Kindle, since the window of applicability was short. At the time, I was more concerned about my ability to handle dark satire. It was distressing to have reality turn far more dark and dangerous. The compensation (to a certain degree) was the ceremony of Inauguration Day, and the surprising, but wonderfully joyful, arrival of Amanda Gorman on our national artistic horizon. Her poetry inspired me to a bit of poetry as well — a poem which can be found elsewhere on my website.
Happily, I’ve come through the Year of Covid in good health, even recently getting the vaccine. It was a bit of a financial challenge in the last quarter of 2020, but this year, I’ve been fortunate in getting more editing work, in particular for Michael Wiese Productions. It’s been agreeable to bring my years of experience in Hollywood to some editing tasks.
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One of the benefits of the increased work this year is that I finally decided to stop using a small folding table as a desk (with the assistance of two side tables as some additional space). I wanted a nice L type formation, but couldn’t find anything quite what I wanted. Then it occurred to me that two desks (of slightly different types) would give me that large amount of work surface that I desired. The combination actually turned out to be less expensive than several of the L shaped desks I looked at.
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The additional work space is as inspiring as I’d hoped it would be. Instead of feeling that all my editing and creative writing was make-do and make-shift, I now feel as if I truly am serious about my writing pursuits. After so long in the nomad make-do mentality, I feel so happily settled in my current living circumstances that many things seem possible.
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Another purchase was something I’ve been wanting to get for years and years: a Wacom Cintiq. Admittedly, the glorious Cintiq 24 was quite out of my price range. But the government’s stimulus payments made it possible for me to get a Cintiq 16. I haven’t been able to do much artwork with it yet, but it turned out to be quite useful in doing a red line proofing edit on a PDF recently. Almost as good as working with a red ink pen on an actual paper printout of a manuscript!
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In any case, although I’ve taken these steps to make my work situation more efficient and satisfying, the rest of my life proceeds at a slow pace. I continue working on physical and mental health, living quietly, and trying to get in creative writing time between the bread and butter editing jobs. So, that’s things more-or-less up to date.
