A Little Update 5-5-2012
Sorry to say I’m still not ready to start posting again BUT I have 12 pages inked and lettered. I grab a half hour here and forty-five minutes there. It’s hard to work up a head of steam. I think I said this before, but I’m aiming to finish the current sequence I’m on (it’s keeps growing) but should have it wrapped up in another two weeks. Then I will go back and start coloring, and as soon as I have enough in the bank to know that I won’t run into a situation like this last one again, I’ll start posting. No firm date just yet, but as soon as possible.
My mom continues to hang in there, though she is slipping away slowly. Fortunately, not a lot of pain.
Most of the reading I’ve done lately has been for my MFA, so there hasn’t been a lot of genre stuff on the agenda. Stephen King’s 11/22/64 was a snooze, and I’m in the middle of World War Z, which strikes me as more of a great marketing concept than a good read. I’m finding it pretty dull going, not so much from the clichés of zombie stories but from the pedestrian prose.
On the plus side, though, I just received my copy of S.T. Joshi’s I Am Providence, the two-volume HPL biography. At $100 it is an indulgence, but you have to do what you have to do. Don’t know when I’ll get time to read it.Oh, and here’s a word of waring for all of you who do business by mail: Delivery Confirmations are a waste of money and worse, a lie. I actually ordered Joshi’s book last month and it never arrived. I’ve dealt with the book dealer for years, great guy, and he sent me the tracking number. The Post Office shows that the book was delivered, so either someone stole it off my porch or it was delivered to someone else who didn’t bother to return it. I get multiple packages every week and I’ve never had one stolen before, so I think this is unlikely. I suppose someone could be lazy enough not to return a hulking big package that is addressed to someone else, but the real point of this is that all a Delivery Confirmation does is show that the package is delivered SOMEWHERE. They keep no other records, so for all we know it was left in a field somewhere. What the hell good is that? And here is the kicker: the USPS employee told me that the insurance I paid for ENDS with the delivery. So even though it was ‘delivered’ somewhere other than my front door, I am probably not going to be able to get the insurance for it. And they wonder why they are losing ground financially?
Anyway, have a good week. Until we meet again. Soon.
May 5th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Keep plugging away man, I’m looking forward to new pages.
May 6th, 2012 at 6:34 am
Thanks for the update; thanks for all your work; looking forward to the next pages. I hope for the best for your mother (even if it is not clear what one may realistically hope for in such situations…)
May 7th, 2012 at 3:58 am
Keep it real, take your time, once it’s up, we’ll be back. Kudos!
May 7th, 2012 at 12:31 pm
Sorry to hear about your mailing problems. Something similar happened to me, albeit with a way less valuable item, but luckily for me, Tracked Delivery also always means Signed on Delivery in my country – there’s some law or something about that.
So I went to the Post Office and asked to see the receipt, and lo, the signature on the receipt was nowhere similar to anything I would write. When confronted with this, the Post Office suddenly started becoming collaborative (they were afraid of lawyers, I guess), and in a couple of days they “magically” found my package – opened, but with everything inside.
I hope this information can help in some way. Snail mail surely is a bother sometimes – I avoid it whenever I can.
May 7th, 2012 at 2:04 pm
I’m very sorry to hear about your mother’s condition.
May 8th, 2012 at 7:52 am
Regular reader and mailman here. Sorry about your bad experience with the company I work for. Our accuracy is really quite good, but when we fail our customer service leaves a lot to be desired…. I wish it were otherwise.
And thanks for the updates. Please keep us posted.
May 8th, 2012 at 11:58 pm
Just know that we’re standing by you. My best wishes for your mother, and for you with her.
May 9th, 2012 at 5:31 pm
I notice that no-one has commented on this. Maybe I’ve missed something. All I know is that you do damn fine work…and caring for a parent is quite possibly the hardest thing in life.
Good work takes time, patience, and an understanding readership. Well, I just wanted to let the world know that you have at least one understanding reader right here. If I have to wait until nameless fungal ‘things’ gnaw at the earth and Mr Zann stands alone before the masked crowd…I will wait for your next page (while wondering who will finally get their heads out of their collective a**es and put you in hardcopy lol).
I truly hope all is as well as can be…
K
May 10th, 2012 at 8:06 am
Hm, now thats the plot for a fine chilling tale, served up in the radiant onyx bacchic Cup of the Ptolemies!