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Marriage, Horror, and Writing

Oct. 15, 2023

I GOT MARRIED. I've got to get that one out of the way if I am to talk about anything else. September 29th, in Michigan - my wife's parent's back yard. Beautiful, perfect weather. Perfect party.

We spent a cumulative week on the road driving from Washington to Michigan and back. I was mostly in the passenger seat, and I got a ton of reading done. It turned into both fall and October on our trip, and as we watched the foliage turn from evergreen to red, orange, and yellow, I began a serious deep dive into horror. Chuck Wendig, Eric LaRocca, Catriona Ward, Stephen King. More to come. I'm doing nothing but reading horror this season, appropriately. I also want to move to Montana and live in the foothills, my cowboy shack buffetted by cliffs and forest. Another lifetime, I suppose. I past through a dozen of those, alternate lives I could live, a museum docent in Detroit, a barista in Minneapolis, a beekeeper in Missoula...

Presently, I'm now a wife in Washington, reading horror, wearing fleece, drinking too much coffee everyday and working on a novel. Yep... I'm happily writing again. I took two months to start a daily practice, writing every day, not necessarily fiction but something. Reflective, complaining, praising, diary-like thoughts. Just "showing up" to the page. And something stuck. A little idea floated down from the heavens above or whatever. Or my superconscious zapped an information download into my subconscious. Or I just thought something was kinda neat. It's too early to talk too much about it, and I'm superstitous that way, but it involves demons and a grocery store. "Write What You Know" or whatever.

What's making this difficult now post-wedding is a wedding gift from my best friend...

A gaming PC.

Yeah...

So, I'm trying to balance my time well. I built this puppy myself, my first time doing so, which was very fun and much easier than I was expecting. She also gave me her old mechanical keyboard, so I come writing to you now from the world of clicky clacky. I'm playing Starfield lately, which came free with my graphics card, woohoo! I think my character looks just like me. Another possible alternate life, I guess...