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A Thousand Lifetimes

A Thousand Lifetimes by Kit Campbell   The pathway was long and dark, spiraling into trees that stretched on forever. Snow dusted leaves and grass. Adelia pulled her cloak closer around her shoulders, taking a deep breath, trying to ignore the crunching of running footsteps behind her. “Wait!” Her brother, Charles, slid to a stop, just outside her range of vision. “Please, don’t do this. I don’t mind, really. Come home.” She couldn’t turn to look at him, or the thinness of this place would be lost. Without answering him, she dug into her bag, pulling out a heavy key, blackened with age. Charles sucked in his breath, but he didn’t reach out for her. Adelia reached the key straight out in front of her, holding it steady. Then, she turned it. The door—and it was a door, though she had expected something less definite—swung open without her touching it. Adelia replaced the key in her bag and squared her shoulders. Beyond the door there was more darkness and hints of whispers. A breeze stirred her hair as she took a step closer. “Please,” Charles said, though now he sounded more distant. “Don’t do this.” But she had to. Her brother—her town—depended on it, and she would not allow his sacrifice. Not to the darkness. Not to the madness. It would not be enough. Though she wanted to look back, to assure him that she needed to do this, she knew the rules. And you never looked back. The darkness…

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Learning

I’m learning my friends. Last month I talked about over-committing, submitting my musical, work, and family commitments that were weighing me down, and all the grand plans I wasn’t getting to. So, for November, I decided to make no commitments at all. (Of course, some of them are ongoing–the Christmas show and concert, kid things, Christmas in general. We’re hosting Thanksgiving again this year after me boycotting doing so last year, but I’m not going to stress about it. If people don’t like how I run it, they can go elsewhere, or they can host it themselves.) What I DID do was set a time goal. 45 minutes a day on something writing related. Literally anything counts. Outlining? Counts. Research? Counts. Watching marketing videos that I’ve had open for six months? Counts. Drawing potential children’s book characters? Counts. I made a list of things it would be nice to get down or make progress on, and off we went. And it is working so well. It’s brilliant. It’s the 13th, I’ve done a little over 9.5 hours of my 22.5 goal, and I have: Updated all my metadata after the CreateSpace/KDP move Finished my anthology story (super excited about the antho!) and edited/revised it Revised a short story Wrote my serial story section for the month (and outlined to The End, a few thousand words off) Looked over the status of the nonfiction series I’ve been working on for three years and outlined the final book (which I am going to start…

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Over-commitment October

Good morning, friends! It’s my favorite month of the year, October, which means, as usual, I have committed to too many things. Stupid month of possibility, letting me think I knew what the heck I was doing. Bah! (Actually, I made the same mistake with September, so maybe it’s fall in general. Or maybe it’s me.) I think I told you guys about the programming class. It ends at the end of the month, and I’ve reached a point in the subject matter where I just don’t quite understand what’s going on. It’s early in the week, and hopefully some of the other assignments will clarify things, but it’s still a bit frustrating. I’ve got a major edit for a repeat client. I’m almost a quarter of the way done, and probably won’t be completely done until mid-December. English isn’t his first language, though he’s spoken it for quite some time, so there’s a lot of little fiddly things to keep an eye on. Rehearsals have started for the Christmas show at my local church/community theater. I’ve been trying out for years and never getting anything except general ensemble, so you can imagine my surprise when they put me both in a small group and gave me a solo. Admittedly, I’m pretty sure I got said solo because of my range (I can sing tenor fairly comfortably) and not because of voice quality, so that’s a thing. I’m feeling pretty awkward about the whole thing, which hopefully is just cuz…

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The Best Laid Plans

Oh, friends. I was so excited for September. The trees are already starting to turn and autumn (the best season, fight me) isn’t far away. Plus, for the first time ever, all my responsibilities will be in school, at least for part of the week. Free time! ahahahahah Or, at least, that was the plan. I made a list of all the writing things I was going to get done in September. It looks something like this: -Children’s books -Nonfiction series -Finish draft -Write anthology story -Edit first chapter on submission novel -Work on Sekrit Project II Admittedly, that is a lot of stuff. But I have guaranteed free time! For the first time in years! ahahahah Unfortunately, two things have combined to destroy all my writing plans. The first is that I have decided I need a change in day job. Admittedly I’m not really day-jobbing on a regular basis at the moment, but it turns out that editing/working on other people’s stories kills my enthusiasm to work on my own. So in a few years all my responsibilities will be at school full time, and I can go back to work in an industry that is creative, but differently creative. So I’m learning how to program. I picked out a course on Coursera and am about halfway done with it. But man, does it take a lot of work! More than I’ve spent working on my freelance and contract jobs in recent years. That by itself is eating…

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A Surplus of Books

It’s moving week around here. My mother, my mother-in-law, my grandmother, the neighbors across the street, someone the next street over… It’s madness. But it’s somewhat removed madness, because I am not moving, and my mother does not want help, and no one else expects any help from my direction. The biggest thing has been my grandmother moving. My grandparents bought the house forty years ago (brand new) and have lived there since (well, my grandfather died some time ago, so Grandma has), so that’s a long time to accumulate stuff. My grandmother is in her late ’90s and has decided to move into assisted living (she’s perfectly lucid, so it was entirely her decision), so she’s also shoving off almost everything. Forty years of everything. My grandmother has five children (including my mother) and apparently there is a feel that everything must be fair about the shoving off of everything, so there’s a long list of things that Grandma is not taking with her, and everyone has to go through it and see what they like, and put in a claim on their preferences. People with children have to do it for both them and their children, so having children actually puts them at a disadvantage because every one of the five siblings gets an equal share. It has turned into a madhouse. I mean, it’s truly remarkable. I won’t go into that, but Good Lord. Last week I went up to visit (my mother also currently lives in the same…

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Planning for Never

Have you ever spent a ton of time of a project you suspect you’ll never do? If you’re anything like me, you love the idea. You do research. You plan things out. Everything would be ready to go…if you would just start it up. Sometimes I even go so far to buy supplies that never get used. (Though I try not to get to that point, because that’s a waste of money that could be used for coffee and books.) There’s something so lovely about an idea, isn’t there? Because it isn’t real, because it doesn’t exist, the possibilities are endless. Of course, there are sometimes reasons not to go through with something–if it’s too expensive, if you don’t have the skills to pull it off, if you can’t fit anything else in your schedule, if you can’t or won’t actually do anything with it when it’s done… The nice thing about ideas is that there’s lots of them. Another one will come along. Or maybe things will change, and that idea will become a reality. I had that happen recently–I planned a short story years ago, but never wrote it. Except now I have, and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, as well. And it doesn’t hurt anything to plan. It’s fun. It’s practice. And maybe something will actually come out of it. Currently I’m poking fantasy clothing. We spend our summers at festivals–medieval festivals, renaissance festivals, Scottish festivals–you name it, and we’re game. And I don’t…

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The More Things Change

I have an actual hometown. You know, the kind you see on TV, where it’s smallish and quaint and has weird tics that everyone who lives there knows about and just accepts as something that is something that you do. Or is. And it is an actual hometown for me, because I was born there and spent most of my childhood there, and because most of my family (sibling, parent, grandparent) still live there, and still live in the same houses. So it was formative in many ways. Now, some time after I left home for college (which was quite some time ago, but I’m not going to tell you exactly how much because it makes me feel old) my hometown decided it was going to reinvent itself. It’s always been kind of a weird relic of the Old West, despite having been absorbed by urban sprawl, but it was decided to, hm, modernize it, I suppose might be the right term. Tear down some of the old things that had been there forever and make new, modern versions of the same thing that was supposed to evoke the town’s history. Pretty up the historic things that were too valuable to replace. Urbanize the “downtown” area and make it the sort of place that young people with lots of money would want to hang out. You know, that sort of thing. I’ve watched it happen with mixed feelings, as I suppose most people do/would in the situation. Sure, that 3-story…

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1-800-HAUNTME

by Kit Campbell   Xavier had just connected when Amy burst in, blood staining his hands. “Quick! Do we have any more chickens?” Xavier held up one hand. “Spell out the following,” he instructed into his headset. “Do not seek what is not meant to be known.” A pause. “Yes, I know it’s long. No, I don’t feel like spelling out crushes tonight. Just do it, okay? Hold on.” He pulled the headset off his ears. “How can you be out of chickens already? I gave you five.” “Well, there’s not a lot of blood in a chicken.” Xavier rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Are you giving her her schedule again?” “No,” said Amy. “All right, yes. But in my defense, you should see her. She’s a mess. She’d never get to class on time if I didn’t remind her.” “Amy, darling, this is supposed to be a demonic possession. Blood oozing down the mirror spelling out threatening messages. You reminding her to get to her classes is not threatening. And what was it last month? A pick-me-up after a bad date?” “It’s still oozing in blood.” Xavier sighed. “Maybe I’ll give you paint,” he murmured. “Would the difference be obvious?” “Harder to clean,” Amy supplied helpfully. “Maybe a nice dry-erase marker—” Isham popped up from behind Xavier’s desk. “They exorcised me again.” “I am on a call here!” Xavier groaned and picked his headset back up. “Better transfer them to Hezekiah. I’ve got to deal with this. Thanks.”…

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That Time of Year

Oh, friends, we all have times of the year that are busier than others, don’t we? Well, this is mine. May and June–yikes. It’s almost worse than the Christmas/New Year cusp (and might be worse in some ways). Spring doesn’t really get here til May, so all season-switching things have to be done–the sprinklers, the trees, planting of gardens, digging out the lawn mower, fixing any damage that winter hath wrought, etc. I have a dead pine tree in the backyard that’s half cut down (the yard guy’s chainsaw broke when he was here on Thursday, and I’ve yet to hear from him again), the dog has eaten a full three saplings (the dangers of puppies you didn’t know about), the mulch we bought for the garden is full of nails (!!!), and other sundries. (Just…don’t have a yard. It’s probably for the best.) (Also I hate rabbits and if they don’t stop eating my flax I am going into the holly bush after them, so help me.) Plus there’s the school stuff–one school year finishing up, so there’s end of year things like collecting friends’ contact info for potential summer get-togethers, getting teacher presents together (oops, deadline is tomorrow, so…), planning “school” birthdays for summer birthdays, finishing up volunteer commitments–and the next school year needing prep, like medical forms and immunizations being submitted, confirming intent to enroll, etc. (Also there’s the end of the year stir-crazies, which are horrible and makes me just want to put everyone outside forever, but then…

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Life!

Oh, friends, I had such plans for yesterday. I was going to go to the gym and do some cycling, because I’d like to do a triathlon this year (though I haven’t found one to do, because so far I have conflicts for all of them). And then I was going to spend a ton of time working on a chapter to send to Siri. Instead I snapped something in my hand and spent four hours at the hospital. And then I came home and mopped the floor, like you do. (I have done triathlons before, the last one in June 2016. I came in 4th and was hoping to try again this year and possibly make the podium, but alas, timing.) (Also I felt like I had to do something productive after not doing anything for four hours, and mopping seemed the least likely thing on my list to hurt my hand.) Doesn’t this always seem to happen? You make plans and life comes along just to laugh at you. I mean, normally the big plans are okay. Maybe because you spend so much more time preparing them. But the daily plans, yikes. It’s an argument against procrastination, if nothing else. And the good news is that my hand is not broken and will probably be fine in a week or so. And the splint I have to wear until then isn’t too itchy. How are you? Things breaking your plans too?

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