Been a rough summer.
I don’t want to make a list of reasons. Just… lots of death in our family and around us…
And just yesterday we found out that our 11.5 year old English Mastiff ‘Bear’ (whom I based Carbine off of in WoP) has an aggressive form of inoperable cancer.
So yeah…. He used to sleep on our upstairs bed until a few months ago when the Vet recommended we keep him on the main floor of the house to save his old joints. He’s been unhappily crashing on the sofa, but we ordered a mattress that’s arriving in a few hours so we can take turns sleeping down stairs with him. He’s still upbeat and playing with stuffed animals out of his toy box, and begging for food… but he’s lost a lot of weight (over 30 lbs in the past 6 months) so we know the cancer has crept into his body.
We’ll keep him happy and spoiled until he lets us know it’s time. Then we’ll be absolutely crushed for a very long time.
The new job is going well. I’m actually enjoying the drive and it’s a pretty stress free gig so far. (Comparatively speaking, I went from a 100/100 on call 24/7 for five years straight to probably a 20/100. I bring my laptop home but I’ve yet to need it. Or receive any calls at 2am. Or have to work on PTO days. Or have to work on sick days…And weekends… etc…)
My lovely wife tells me I’m a much happier person with this job. I think part of that is the ‘decompression’ of a one hour drive afterwards. But a lot has to do with the stress and reduction of work to office hours.
With the new gig and all the death, I ended up not writing for about four weeks. Which is a massive amount of time to be down, especially with a goal of a fall 2026 release for Eat the Survivors.
But I just wasn’t into it. I can’t put my finger on it, but I needed a break. And I took one.
Now I’m back at it. I actually was going to write right now, but decided since I hadn’t made a post in a while – I should do that.
Gotta stay relevant.
Anyways.
I hope you all are reading lots of books, shooting lots of stuff, resisting Communism, raising future Christian warriors, and bettering yourselves.
Until the next post…
See ya.
Erik.
Gunpowder and Ink! 