Like a lot of you, I’ve been cooped up in my house, wishing I was at the beach, in the mountains, or visiting family. Instead, Netflix has become my closest friend.
But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t taken advantage of these days of isolation. I told Celeste Perrino, my friend and co-author of Salome’s Charger, that quarantine is a good time to get writing done. She couldn’t identify with my situation, however. I’m a university professor; she’s a nurse, and so an essential worker. I’m working at home, and she’s working 12-hour shifts in the hospital, exposed to COVID everyday.
But my summer actually started after spring break in March and has stretched on and on through July. Classes start next month, and they’re still not sure whether I will be in the classroom, or teaching from my study, as I did the last six week of spring semester. I hope to find out soon.
Since March, I finished the first draft of Never Say Die, the historical novel I have been thinking about for several years. It’s out of my traditional genre of Christian suspense, but once in a while I like to spread my wings and try out other stuff. The problem comes when my usual audience reads it and is disappointed because it isn’t what they were expecting. More on that later. I’ll be working on NSD for probably another year, and will likely try to get it traditionally published.
The other big, big project has been our patio. It started out as a worn out brick patio that was built several decades ago, was sunken down in places, with broken bricks in other places. At my wife’s prompting, I started replacing it in May, and finished it about a week ago.
I think it turned out pretty good. Now I am nursing a bad back, and am getting ready for classes. We still can’t go anywhere, but that just means we’re saving money and able to pay off bills. So that’s a good thing.
This too shall pass. At least we can pray that it will.
The Great Adventure 