May Update

Stumbling into retirement?

Hello, Glass Half Full readers! Here’s a little news since my update in April. Read to the end for upcoming publishing news.

I had my heart procedure (ablation) in late April. After a bumpy first ten days, it was like someone hit my on switch. I suddenly had much more energy! This was what I’d hoped for, and I’ve spent the last month rebuilding my fitness, both mental and physical. Ironically, I now have so much energy that I’m lying awake at night, leading to fatigue during the day. Weird!

During those first ten days, when I was lying on the couch, wondering if I’d ever get back to my former self, the YouTube algorithm fed me videos of hikers in my former stomping grounds, San Diego. Many of them were starting their journeys on the Pacific Crest Trail, beginning at the border in Campo and heading northwards and upwards to the Laguna Mountains, then down into the desert near Anza-Borrego State Park. Here’s a good example:

Waves of nostalgia washed over me as I watched these videos, both for the place I used to call home and for the me that had been able to go on those adventures. Would I ever be able to do that again? Plus, I’d once put considerable work into a guidebook to the San Diego portion of the PCT. That was in the days of traditional publishing, and before YouTube. The project foundered due to my doubts of ever placing it with a traditional guidebook publisher, so watching all these videos gave me a mix of both nostalgia and regret.

The upshot of all this is that you might get to read some portions of that guidebook here on my Substack. I’d call it refrying the beans, but I think that term only applies to previously published work. Here’s my Flickr photo album of the San Diego portion of the trail. And here’s one of the views from the trail in the Laguna Mountains.

Whale Peak in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, viewed from the PCT. (author photo)

Now that I’ve got my energy back and am regaining fitness for hiking, my wife and I are planning a big trip out west this fall. Unfortunately, the increase in energy didn’t come with an increase in focus. What focus I do have is going into planning for a two-month hiking-biking-paddling trip. That means I haven’t had much motivation to put either Ship of Fools or Lost Lake into other formats. Editing, contracting for cover art, dealing with Amazon and all the other platforms — that all seems like too big a mountain to climb, while climbing actual mountains now seems much more achievable.

Plus, I’m just a couple of months from digging out of my debt to our family finances from Ada’s Children, so going into more debt to bring these works to just a few interested readers doesn’t seem like a good idea. (If you are one of those readers who really wants a print copy of either work, leave a comment or email me and we’ll work something out.)

The TL;dr: I may be stumbling into retirement! Which is usually how I do things. We’ll see how I feel after our trip. Maybe I’ll come back feeling rejuvenated, with more energy for writing and publishing. Or who knows, maybe I’ll turn my attention to music, my first passion. We’ll have to see.

Publishing News

I’m pleased to announce that my sci-fi story, “NPCs,” has been selected for an anthology, The Midnight Vault II, which comes out June 1. It’s a collection of 22 sci-fi and horror stories loosely inspired by The Twilight Zone and published here on Substack. I’ll send you a link as soon as it’s available next week. Here’s more info from the publisher, Tiny Worlds. (Note: I’m taking the story down from this website in advance of this publication.)

That’s all the news for now. Stay tuned for that buying link next week.

Another mountain I’ve climbed: the north face of San Jacinto. It sits at the northern end of the Peninsular Ranges, with the PCT following the ridge on the right. Funny how that 10,000-foot face never seemed as daunting as publishing a book! (photo by Ricardo Soria - read his trip report here)