My cyborg heart, Citadel updates, and why 5% is good
Yesterday I had my annual cardiology appointment — a general "pacemaker tuneup" kind of thing. This can be a little grueling, with people stabbing me, stealing my blood, forcing me to run on a treadmill, and making me wait around without my beloved technology to keep me company.
I snuck in my phone and Kindle.
The good news is I'm ship shape! And though the obvious joke that I'm also "ship shaped" could be made here, my doctor actually gave me kudos for losing a fairly significant amount of weight since my last visit.
The nurse gave me an extra ego boost by doing a double take when she saw my age. "You're 41?" she asked.
"Yes, how old do I look?"
"I thought you were maybe in your early 30s."
"I accept your reality as my own."
And from the pacemaker front, it's still pacing the top chamber 100%, so I'm still dependent on it for everyday living and breathing. But it doesn't pace the bottom chamber at all, so that's positive. The Medtronics technician tells me I have around 11 years left on the battery before I'll have to go back under the knife.
"I hoping that by then someone will create a way to use induction charging, so people like me won't have to have surgery every few years," I said.
"Not going to happen," he said. "Because then people like you wouldn't have to have surgery every few years."
I didn't like that answer. And I don't, in any way, hold Medtronics accountable for an offhand remark from one of their technicians, who couldn't possibly know the plans or motives of the company at large. But the thinking behind that rings fairly true. It's not in the best interest of the medical industry to have permanent replacement technology. This makes my cyborg heart burn.
In other more authorish news, I continue to make progress on "Citadel: Children of Light!" Be sure to check my Progress page to keep up with me keeping up. I'm at 5% completion for the book, which doesn't sound like a lot when I see it onscreen. But it represents pretty significant forward momentum.
Far from being just "throw the words on the page, churn out page after page," that 5% represents both the writing and the first pass of editing and revision. I re-read and edit the previous work each time I sit down to write. I have markers, so I can go back to the previous bit of writing, and that means spending a large chunk of time editing before I get to start tappity-tap-tapping at the keyboard. It's an involved and evolving process, but fun and productive.
So 5% is a good bit of progress at less than a month in. Scaling that will be exponential, too. In other words, 5% now isn't an indication that the book will take 20 months to write. So the answer to "when will Book 3 get here" is "soon." I promise, it's coming, and I'm working hard to make sure the delays are tamped down as much as possible.
On other fronts, the audiobook versions are in progress. I'm in contact with John Pio pretty regularly, and other than the woes of workload, he's very enthusiastic about the stories and the work.
In promotions, I've seen a HUGE uptick in page likes for the Citadel Facebook page and my author page. Thank you! I'm really pleased to see it, and I know that with your help we can make this series and my work move on up the ladder at Amazon, and reach more people. I'm thrilled about this, and so very grateful!
That's the update this week. Thanks for checking in, and thanks for being such a huge support to me and my work. My heart, newly tuned up and humming like a luxury automobile, warms every time I think of you. And unless there's a short in my pacemaker, I'm pretty sure that means I love you, snookums.