A new start on Book 23

I was so stuck on 23 for a while, after it was getting worse since my last post about it. It was to the point of trying to swim in cured cement--not happening.

I started over. It took some stepping back, but that's what the story needed. Within two days, I had over 2,000 words on it. The last few days, I was a bit busy and writing slowed a little, but right now it's around 4,000 and a much better opening. It'll keep some elements but is much closer to what I had in mind in my original notes.

You can't force a story. It has be feel natural for the setting and characters, although it's not about feeling. The creativity is a bit of... exaggerated parts of oneself, sometimes grotesquely exaggerated as to be pretty much something else, but it all comes from within and what we've absorbed of other stories, other books, our culture, etc.

I feel much better about this opening, because the other was missing that hook or mystery and then I just couldn't give some of it enough of a reason for happening. It was forced and I could feel that too. That's why I got stuck at 10K words.

I would rather it take a bit longer to write the right book for the series than try to force myself to write words that didn't fit the pieces.

Anyway, it's moving along very well. It was a rough start the first time, but this time, it's flowing easily, like it should.

And here's the old man. He still has what I call his bracelet from the vet when he had his teeth cleaned a short while ago:

He's losing weight, but in his old age, he's sleeping a lot and not eating as much as he needs to. It's especially tough because he has to be on a super special diet or bad things happen. On the good side, he's not acting quite so odd like he has dementia. He's back to being more of himself. I'll take what I can get, because I would bet, from my experience, that he won't make it to sixteen. I'll enjoy what time we have left together.

God bless!

Halloween truth and origins

Halloween - Meet an exorcist (video)

 

Holiness Conference (5-part video series)

Happy birthday to an old friend...

She knows who she is. I won't divulge because it's personal information, but she knows it's her birthday. After all these years, I haven't forgotten. 🥳

(I'll always be your elder.)

I had this made by AI just for you (I know how much you like your western romances):

The Truth About Exorcism w/ Msgr. Stephen Rossetti | Catholic Conversations with Fr. Mark Baron, MIC (video title)

Is Halloween a Pagan Holiday? (And Should We Boycott It?) (video title)

Update on print collections of Forgotten Worlds!

After reading through the series again and fixing mistakes I've found--as a writer, I'll never NOT find things I want to fix--I've finally begun the process of reformatting the paperbacks to get those available again. I'm glad I waited. I learned a few things that improved the formatting.

Because these are omnibus editions, they're too long for hardcover on Amazon. I'll go back to making them available as paperback on Amazon.

The first of them, Collection 1 (Books 1-5), is in the proofing stage after a long day of formatting that. Once I have a chance to review those proofs and approve them, I'll make those available.

I hope to have the first three ready in time for the holidays and will work on Collection 4 (Books 16-20) once I've read through those books and fixed any mistakes.

Because this is such a tedious process, I did not get any writing done today. On the good side, I now have everything with the updating process down so that the next two should go a bit faster and I can get back to writing sooner.

This has been a nice little break from writing, where I was sort of stuck just under 10K words on Book 23. When that happens, it helps to work on something else for a day or two to refresh the creativity. This has been a good break from the writing side, although I loathe the formatting of print.

And I may just go ahead and release the collections as ebooks also. I expect to price them at $9.99 each (5 books per collection).

That's been my Saturday and will probably fill up Sunday as well.

Thanks for reading!

Praying with imagination and the interference of Satan and human ego. Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi explains. (video title)

The Lord Is Trying to Speak To You | 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (video title)

My Mother in Purgatory obtained My Miraculous Conversion...Here's My Story (video title)

Book 23 update

I made some great progress on Book 23 of Forgotten Worlds lately. I changed the setting, and now the whole plot I thought I wanted is different but in a good way. I had some difficulty with the original idea.

Those reading through Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds know that the characters are an ensemble of misfits of a wide range of backgrounds. They form what I would call a sort of clean, Christian mash-up between Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars.

Back when I first announced this project, I had outlined more plot ideas than I would need and eventually settled on 25 books. As the story evolved, I decided on the storylines I wanted to write into the series arc. While each episodic book is a complete story, each is like a chapter of a larger book, planned out in the same way that Babylon 5 was.

This has been a monumental undertaking for me that required an outline with notes for each book, but I left room for changes on the fly and there have been many that helped the overall series arc tremendously. Book 23 is proving to be no different, and I like that it can still surprise me. They're fun surprises that keep me going. In this case, Zaer gave me something entertaining and is jumping into the foreground again. She can be quite a spitfire yet do a complete one-eighty to being motherly, or vice versa, on a moment's notice. Her personality has always been interesting and her background even more so.

With this cast of characters, I have a lot of options for how to make the stories interesting, or at least I think they do. I hope readers are enjoying them, because this one is developing into another interesting adventure in a way I hadn't expected, the last big one in advance of the final two books, which will be a combined two-punch climax of everything that has been building in the series. The first draft of book 23 has 8,600 words as of tonight.

I'm excited to see how the adjusted outline of the book plays out. The writing is as much of an adventure as reading is.

Thanks for reading!

Her husband confessed sins to a Protestant pastor. The pastor was uncomfortable with the whole thing (video title)

a new hope... for an old cat

Our old cat that had seemed to be having symptoms of dementia has been doing much better lately, starting about the third day after having his teeth cleaned.

My thinking is that he had mouth pain that was distracting him.

Now, I may have figured out something because of my own health issues that might apply to him also. Vitamins weren't helping me get my energy and focus back and writing was getting more difficult. However, I've been feeling great after starting a supplement with NADH and CoQ10. In fact, I feel amazing! I've tried NADH previously and it was too potent for me, but I had been feeling fatigued more and more often over the last year, especially since this summer's crash. Now, I seem to be tolerating it better, probably because I need it. My creativity spikes soon after taking it and I can go all day without a nap. It's in animal proteins, but I get painful digestive cramps from red meat, so it would make sense that I would be low (tested negative for alpha-gal syndrome).

I realized our oldest cat has been on a hydrolyzed protein diet because of his intolerance to proteins, which may have been causing similar problems. However, shortly before his teeth cleaning, he started not wanting to eat his prescription diet food, so we tried a non-prescription version, which has chicken protein in it. That could be helping him, although he has had stinky gas that seems to be decreasing in frequency slowly.

For myself, I went to order a straight CoQ10 in a capsule and saw a review of its usefulness for dogs. This got me wondering about our cat, since dogs and cats tend to be very similar in what they can and can't eat. What about supplements?

I did a quick search and found this: https://www.vetriscience.com/coenzyme-q10-10-mg-capsules.html. Since we have autoship set up with Chewy, I've ordered a bottle from them for our old cats and will how well they tolerate it and if that makes a difference, especially since they're all on their own specialized diets and get picky about eating so they may not be getting enough of what they need as they get older.

If any other old-cat owners out there are seeing similar issues, it may be worth checking out. I'm anxious to see if this helps, but it could be a few weeks before we know for sure.

In the meantime, I'll be praying that this is the solution for all of us.

When this former Satanist saw Mary and realized he did not really sell his soul to Satan... (video title)

A bit of the above is in this shorter video:

Sophistry Exposed: How Emotional Appeals Replace Truth (Plato, Aristotle & Today) ~ Fr. Ripperger (video title)

Fr. Chad Ripperger has a PhD in philosophy. He is not only an exorcist priest but is a "doctor".

Surviving the Dark Night of the Soul - Explaining the Faith (video title)

Writing update

It's already been around six weeks since I published Book 20. After that, I read through 21 and 22.

I'd estimate it's been about three to four weeks since I started writing Book 23, but it was a rough start. I thought I had the story I wanted, but then I had other ideas... ideas that came to a screeching halt in the face of a combined one-two punch of perimenopause and autoimmune flare up.

However, I've gotten over that stumbling block and am writing. So far, I have around 7,000 words on Book 23 written and it's along the lines of what I had in mind but a bit different setting. I also may be showing a different effect of the Starfire from its blending with a different species. That will really bring some things together from the beginning of the series, and I can't wait to see how it comes together.

While Nya and L'Ni and the new character seek out the Keepers and the Starfire, the Ethalian military coalition is preparing for the big attack on the Issan.

It's been a long road and this will be the most difficult to write, but I am determined to finish this. It'll be worth the wait.

Thanks for your patience!

ps--Dargo has improved, but the effects from having his teeth cleaned and a piece of tooth root taken out was frightening for a while there. He's an old boy showing signs of age, just not as bad as he was right after being under anesthesia. Thanks for any prayers offered for him. I always ask for the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi, who has been great about helping me with this boy's health issues through the years.

God bless!

Imploring God to rid the world of evil; God will reward you accordingly. Fr. Iannuzzi explains (video title)

On Bad Thoughts ~ St. Alphonsus

aging pets are heartbreaking

A lot of writers have pets. We have the typical cat clowder. I've occasionally posted about them here with pictures.

It's been just under six years since we put down our oldest and first family kitty when she was sixteen. Because she was showing all signs of being at the end but not letting go, we took her to the vet as a mercy. As soon as the needle was in, she was already gone. She still had her mental faculties.

Our current oldest, Dargo, is fifteen today, but is going downhill fast. For several months, I've been noticing signs of dementia (feline cognitive dysfunction syndrome or CDS), which has been heartbreaking. I fear his time is coming soon. I have a friend who has told me about her husband's dementia and taking care of him, and the signs I've seen in Dargo and researched are a lot of the same, but in a cat way. It's heartbreaking to watch him fade away from me, like watching him die mentally while still being alive in body.

To try to help with his decreasing eating, we had his teeth cleaned recently. However, that hasn't helped. I don't know how much time he has, but in celebration of the momma's boy who has been a part of our household since he was seven weeks old, here's some moments from our lives together:

Kitten Dargo and (now deceased) Padme

Dargo loved his foster mother Padme. He mourned her death
for a few months.

Dargo and Suki competing for space in the bay window
and deciding to share it.

Mom's snuggle buddy! Soon after his first teeth cleaning
a few years ago

The Power and Purpose of Prayer (video title)

October 7: Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary... the spiritual truth behind the Battle of Lepanto

Our Lady of Victory/Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

A quick note on my website contact form

My old Yahoo email is where the contact form submissions from my website get sent. However, Yahoo has been classifying more and more legitimate email as spam. Although most of those emails are spam from my website, occasionally, valid emails also get sent to spam and I miss them.

If I have not replied to your email, use the email in my book, the same email, and try again. That doesn't mean Yahoo won't send that also to spam too. I'm working on training the filter, but I often forget to check spam and apologize for any non-response. It wasn't this bad before they changed their email system.

The other option is to reply here, but because of some nasty commenters, I've set this blog up to require an account. Because Blogger is owned by Google, that means a Google account.

I'm sorry to make things difficult, but if you receive enough spam of your own, you'll understand why this is so frustrating on both sides - overwhelming spam and losing valid emails.

Thank you for your patience.

God bless!

St. Faustina: Her Life and Spirituality - Explaining the Faith (video title)

Today, October 5, is the the feast day of St. Faustina Kowalska. This date marks the anniversary of her death in 1938. The Diary of Saint Faustine Kowalska, Divine Mercy in My Soul, is an excellent read and inspiring for anyone seeking to grow spiritually. Reading about the life of a future saint gives one insight into the trials and tribulations of a soul seeking to grow. Saint Faustina's diary is different than the writings of other saints in that she writes about direct visions of Jesus, who asked her to bring the message of Our Lord's Divine Mercy to the world.

Eternal Father, I offer you the body, blood, soul, and divinity of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in You!

The full Divine Mercy chaplet can be found here: https://www.thedivinemercy.org/message/devotions/pray-the-chaplet

ps - On a side note, this day would have been the birthday of my deceased brother. I believe he would have had a devotion to St. Faustina if he had survived longer than just short of 22 years that he had on this earth.

Catholic exorcist shares what happened: Musicians consecrating their albums to Satan! (video title)

The angel sent the dog to help Fr. Reehil? 16 Beautiful Things I've Learned about Guardian Angels (video title)

This past week were two angelic recognition days in the church:

• (Sept. 29) Michaelmas, the Feast of St. Michael, St. Raphael, and St. Gabriel, the only angels named in the Bible
• (Oct. 2) The Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels

Operation Overlord of Spiritual Warfare! (video title)