When I’m not writing books, I work at a daycare center. I’m usually only there about 15 hours a week; my job is to cover the lunch breaks of the full-time staff. But this past week, due to staff members being on vacation or out for other reasons, I worked 26 hours. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was more than I’m used to. (I have chronic health issues that impede my ability to work; I can’t manage full-time at all, which is why I took a part-time job.) And I haven’t been sleeping well the past several days, so today, I’m completely exhausted.
On the plus side, though, I got through December 1. Two awful things happened on that date, in 2022 and 2023 respectively, so I was a little worried about how things would go. But I got through the day, and this year nothing awful happened. (Though arguably, the U.S. presidential election was an early horrible thing for this year…)
And despite having to work more this week, and spending a lot of my time at home trying to sleep, I managed to get a solid start on writing Sorry About the Seitan (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 8)! I’m very happy about that. So far, a lot of what I’ve written is backstory, which I’ll wind up removing when I edit the book.
A very short excerpt (unedited):
Some time later, I realized the room was a lot brighter than it had been. I’d slept so deeply I didn’t remember any dreams, which was probably a good thing. My nightmares didn’t affect me as much as Kyle’s and Quinn’s affected them; I’d had decades to get used to them and to work through some of the trauma that spawned them. But that didn’t mean I enjoyed having them, and a night without any that I recalled was a good night.
Beside me, Kyle still breathed evenly. Either he was still asleep or he’d chosen to pretend he was. I didn’t need to know which. During the night, we’d rolled away from each other. I debated waking him for some cuddling—and possibly the enactment of his promise—before we went downstairs for breakfast, but a glance at my phone showed that we didn’t have time. The fact that the sun was up on a December morning when sunrise was after 7 a.m. should have clued me in to the fact that I should have already been downstairs.
I rushed through cleaning up in the bathroom that adjoined our bedroom and pulled on slacks and a sweater. Ordinarily, what I wore in the morning didn’t matter much. I kept things as informal as I could, especially at mealtimes. But with Justin scheduled to arrive within a couple of hours, I had to look more official.
I wasn’t a fan of “official.” But it was part of the cost of being the Anax.