Well. Today, WordPress upgraded to 5.5. This… broke things, for the first time since 2.x, on my site. Much of the morning, in which I intended to upload the latest short story (after formatting, proofing, etc.) was stalled by the fact that the backend of my site wasn’t really working. (Jeremy Tolbert rescued me: he told me exactly what was broken – a plug-in. It’s upgraded and working now).
And then, to top it all off, when uploading the story to kindle, I uploaded the wrong story. I noticed this when uploading to Kobo, because the cover… was the last story’s cover T_T. I have not, however, thrown my computer out the window. Barely.
This short story was published in 1997, so written in 1996. It’s interesting to read it now; it was, of the many short stories, tonally and linguistically the most natural to me or my sense of voice at the time. But it is not terribly modern in either of those senses.
As usual, you can read the story for free here. Or you can purchase it from any of the usual suspects listed on the story’s page, here.
In other news: I have finished the first draft of Cast in Conflict, the next Cast novel. I am working on the next West novel — which has gone through various revisions and multiple chapter ones — but it is not finished yet. It’s longer than the Cast novel, but as of yet unfinished. The next Sagara novel I am working on — although I might take a mental health break before I start it — will be the second Severn novel.
***
Toronto, like much of NA, is going through discussions about school and kids. As both of mine are no longer children, I don’t have the difficult decision to make (spoiler: I would have kept them home; the youngest because of autoimmune PTSD (his autoimmune problem, his mother’s PTSD) and the oldest because he kind of hated school.
But had that not been the case, I would probably have risked it for the elementary school — it’s neighborhood dependent, and our neighborhood has seen no new cases of covid-19 for three months. Other neighborhoods have, of course, and the Teachers and staff don’t necessarily live in our same neighborhood.
HOWEVER, we could make this decision because there have been no new covid cases in our neighborhood for three months. Were we at the contagion level of most of the US, there’s no way we would have sent the kids back. Zero chance. As it is, no preparations have been made for social distancing in the school itself; the TDSB is in theory expected to open as normal.
Which it’s not. I have strong sympathy for parents struggling to make this decision and strong sympathies for the teachers who are more at risk of death.
***
Your non-political statement for the day: the USPS is being destroyed — quickly — from the inside by its new postmaster. Necessary medications and cheques are being delayed by up to two weeks; they once arrived in a couple of days. Please, please, please make as much fuss as you can — those medications/cheques/supplies are going to people of any political persuasion, and they are becoming collateral damage.
Taylor 
DeDe 
KW McCabe 
Joyce Ronquillo 
Liza Ismail 
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… or apparently not. Excuse me while I try to find out why my carriage returns have disappeared and I now have a wall of text T_T