Getting my ducks in a row

Watched four ducks swim by on the lake yesterday, side-by-side. I said, “They’ve got their ducks in a row.” I got a strange look from my daughter and continued, “If they were following each other, they’d be in a column.” A little Excel humor. She appreciated it.

Even on a rainy day, being out here near the lake is lovely. Michele was out there on the point somewhere practicing her inner Sarah Woodruff.

I guess I need to catch up on some stuff that has interrupted my flow the past while. Too long, if you ask me. Late last summer, I started having some significant sinus drainage that began blocking my nasal passages so thoroughly that I started sleeping with my mouth open. That dried out my mouth so severely that I would wake up several times in the night gasping for breath and needing water to open my mouth. I figured it would all dissipate once I got to Arizona and out of whatever stuff was in Idaho that was making me wheeze.

No such luck. The condition continued to worsen all through the winter until by mid-April it was rare for me to get a good night’s sleep. Not having learned from the winter, I assumed it would be better once I got to Idaho and away from whatever was causing it.

No such luck. I kept having lousy nights and it extended into days. I’d just forget to breathe and then start gasping for air. I felt like I couldn’t get my lungs filled. Okay. Enough sadness and panic.

I came down to Seattle Thursday and had a doctor’s appointment complete with x-rays Friday morning. Very nice doctor I hadn’t seen before (had to take who was available) got right on it. Some fluid in the lungs but not a pneumonia. Aggravated by sinus drainage, especially when I lie down. Bronchial infection. She put me on five days of Prednisone to be followed by a maintenance dose of Flow-vent as long as needed. Immediate relief from Ambusol. Continue taking Mucinex and dosing with Flo-nase before bed.

I cleaned up okay for the wedding, I guess. Got a lot of compliments on the hat.

I started with the Prednisone and Ambusol immediately and drove to my friends’ wedding several hours away (50 miles, 3.5 hours) feeling better. Still not 100% and had to leave the party early in order to be sure to get the 60 miles home that night. The breathing had also affected my appetite and I was able to eat very little of the fantastic food at the wedding. On the way home, I stopped after 20 miles at a roadside rest area north of Tacoma and slept for half an hour before I felt up to driving the rest of the way.

I went to bed with another sound dose of Ambusol and slept straight through the night for seven hours! Saturday was a much better day. Last night, I got a solid five hours straight without even getting up for the bathroom in the night. It’s too early for me to claim a miracle cure, but I’m feeling much livelier and more energetic today than I have in quite a while.

I might write a book.

Don’t be afraid to buy one if you are so moved!

Speaking of writing, which I usually do, both my pace and my subject matter have been off a bit this month while dealing with the drained energy. I barely got 20,000 words written this week which is the slowest week so far this year. (860,000 words so far this year.) I have managed to keep up with my Camp NaNoWriMo goal of getting a chapter published every day this month, but only barely.

There have been a couple of flat spots in the graph. Still, not too bad overall.

So that brings me to the next issue I’m dealing with. Travel. If you haven’t heard, I’m planning to head off around the world in October. I did that in 2015 and loved it. This trip will be a little over six months and will include places I’ve never been as well as visits to places I want to return to.

If I have a passport. I was ready to start making flight reservations and went to get my passport only to discover that I can’t find it. My travel docs wallet might as well not exist. I opened every door and every box in my trailer last week and discovered that I wasn’t just missing my passport, but all my personal papers, like birth certificate, bankruptcy, marriage/divorce papers, property ownership. Everything was missing.

I was officially undocumented. As a middle age white man, that didn’t particularly put me in danger because—white privilege. Still, I needed some of those papers in order to get a new passport. Proof of identity and proof of citizenship. I made a stop at my storage locker Friday and opened every box in it. Sure enough, I’d put all my personal papers in the box of genealogy materials where it would be easily accessible for family research. At least I’m not undocumented any longer, but I need to contact an expediting service tomorrow and get my passport replaced so I can get a visa for China so I can make my first flight reservation.

In the meantime, the hay in our community is all baled now. Thorp Fruit in Ellensburg continues to be a standard stop on my way across country.

And writing the next volume (5) of my massive series, “The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins” is progressing into the last volume, Double Team.

I’m continuing to work slowly on the sequel to Municipal Blondes and still expect to have Stocks & Blondes ready in about a month. In other words, life goes on. Keep up!

What people are saying

About Wild Woods

“This is easily the strangest/oddest/most unusual tale I have read in the last 50 years—unique to say the least. Thanks for your time and talent.”

“I wish it were possible to assign a point above a 10 to the occasional story that merits very special consideration and award. This would be one that deserves an 11.”

“An intriguing story with great characters—both heroes and villains—as well as great storytelling and moral teachings without being preachy. Well deserving of the aforementioned 11. Even better than City Limits!”

“Wonderful story. Well told. Well written. Thank you.”

With 3,500 downloads per chapter at StoriesOnline, Wild Woods has garnered an 8.74/10.0 rating from nearly 500 voters. The book is available in paperback or Kindle version from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S4CVZKX

And in .ePub for Nook and eReaders from Barnes & Noble at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wild-woods-nathan-everett/1131673515?ean=2940161211823

Remember: If you love an author, leave a review!

And now, about Municipal Blondes:

“Great Story and perfect ending. Had me tearing up at the end. Thank You for an excellent read.”

“Excellent as always. Thanks so much for sharing your talent with all of us. As I live in the Seattle area your stories always resonate with me even more.”

“I do hope you can keep Deb going, she has a good story line starting and it seems like a good place to continue from.”

Municipal Blondes was downloaded 3,000 times per chapter and garnered a score of 8.29/10.0 with 450 votes. It’s a fun sequel to the Dag Hamar mystery series, featuring his partner, Deb Riley.

It is available from Amazon in paperback or Kindle eBook at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S7YNTFB

And in .ePub for Nook and eReaders at Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/municipal-blondes-nathan-everett/1131678734?ean=2940161239926

And for Devon Layne’s Double Time:

“I have always maintained that character focused chapters are your biggest strength and any time you do them I will instantly like them. Not only was this no exception, but I will even go as far as to say that it is a go to example on just how good you are when it comes to writing chapters like that.”

“I have been reading your story non-stop for hours today, and I was pretty taken by the quotes you put at the beginning of every chapter. I am thinking of reading those books. And thanks for the wonderful story too.”

“I've been a fan for a long time now. I believe that this is your finest offering so far! I'll eagerly await the completion of the next book in this series. Thank you for all of your work...TEN!”

Amazon has declined to release this book and the prequel Double Take on their platform, therefore, the Kindle version can only be ordered direct from me at www.paypal.me/aroslav for $5.00. Be sure to leave delivery email address and the words “Double Time”. (Or “Double Take” if you want the first volume.)

Barnes & Noble has no such qualms and the .ePub book is available at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/double-time-devon-layne/1131678783?ean=2940161239995

Double Time currently has a score of 8.16/10.0 at StoriesOnline with 800 votes. It’s been downloaded over 5,000 times per chapter. Devon Layne patrons at the Sausage Grinder tier ($10/month) are enjoying a chapter a day of this story in raw, unedited format. So far, they have access to over 200 chapters in the saga. Join at www.patreon.com/aroslav.

Well, that’s what people say. How about joining them and leaving a review at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, or LibraryThing. I’m also available for a guest appearance on your book blog. Lots of fun stuff to talk about!

Calling All Time Travelers

Yes! I want your time travel story. But before you dig out the manuscript you wrote in 1826, let me explain what’s going on and how you can participate in this once in a lifetime opportunity. Twice if you’re really a time traveler.

Page 1: Like everything I write, there’s a story to this request and possibly a story at the end of it. It starts with a peek into the writing process.

I was happily minding my own business and writing 30-40,000 words a week on my multiple works in progress. Doug and I were sitting around the campfire early this spring talking about my Devon Layne erotic do-over story Double Take. Then out of the blue, he tosses out, “You know what would be neat? A time travel story. Suppose there was some kind of vortex floating around that seemed to follow this one guy. When it catches him, he’s randomly caught up in a time distortion and plopped down at some other time in history. Past, present, future.”

“That could be interesting,” I mused. I’m not sold on it yet.

“Well, in each time he’s plopped down, he makes friends, enemies, lovers… maybe has a family. Then he gets caught again and they all disappear and he has to start over sometime new. Maybe he’s able to take one person with him but he’s left everyone else behind. Eventually, he starts piecing together the stories of the people he left behind and what happened to them.”

Doug gets enthusiastic about ideas like this and soon had me caught up in it as well. He had snippets of what could happen.

He’s being shot at on the Gettysburg battlefield and all of a sudden a guy next to him whispers, “You're supposed to fall down.” He realizes he’s no longer in 1863 but in a 2018 reenactment.

I started thinking about what could hold it all together. Then he hit me with one more thing.

“You can’t start writing it yet. You have to finish Double Team and Stocks & Bondage first. When you are off traveling around the world this winter, pick out some interesting locations where he could end up. Think about what he’s encountering. And we’ll talk it over and you can start writing sometime this winter.”

You see, the last time Doug made a suggestion for a story I was working on something else and was going to wait a few months before I started the new thing, but it was shiny and characters started talking to me and I sat down and wrote it immediately. He doesn’t want to risk having me get sidetracked when I have other projects to finish. So, I agreed that until I take off in October, all I can do is brainstorm and make notes.

Page 2. We were sitting by the campfire enjoying some particularly good scotch a few nights ago when Doug said, “You’ve got a pretty big network of fans and patrons. Why don’t you ask them for ideas of times and places they’d like to time travel to and why? Just a short snippet. No do-over stuff. Can’t go back to when you were eighteen and got drunk, tattooed, and enlisted. This is all about going someplace sometime that you think would be interesting to visit and having an adventure there.”

I have two different blogs, two Facebook accounts, two Twitter accounts, two Patreon accounts, and several hundred fans. So that’s why I’m setting about calling for your ideas about time travel. Here are the rules:

Respond via email, not comments to this blog, to Nathan@NathanEverett.com with the subject line: Time Travel. Let’s keep it simple. State when you would like to time travel to (past present future), where you would like to be when you arrive, and in 100 words or less, why you would like to travel there/then. I’ll collect these and start making sense out of them while I’m jetting around the world this winter.

Everyone who responds with an idea, whether I use it or not, will receive a copy of the eBook that results—probably late next summer—so be sure to include a usable email address. I won’t use it for anything else.

Right now, I don’t know how long each adventure will be. I don’t know the exact nature of the book, but I expect it will have humor, tears, and triumphs. I also expect that it might fall under the authorship of Devon Layne erotica, but it is also possible that I’ll produce two different versions, one with and one without sex. That would be a good trick!

Page 3: Keep those cards and letters coming, fans. And join my Patreon page to help me travel this winter and collect all those good locations and story ideas! https://www.patreon.com/join/NathanEverett