What? What Day is it Already?

Wow. It’s been almost a week since I posted anything here.

A decent regard for the opinions of mankind requires me to make an explanation of why I’ve been silent for so long.

Partly, I was having fun. I got invited to no less than three meals/parties/whatever over the weekend. It ate up my blogging time, and I’m not sorry.

I’m especially not sorry because the rest of my life is beset by an endless, complex set of distractions— each of them, in essence, unique, and thus requiring a disproportionate amount of my time. I’ve had to correct erroneous biographical information in Contemporary Authors, which required a lot of time spent online looking up fiddly little details, like exactly what year “Lethe” was nominated for a Nebula Award. (I’ve already forgotten the answer.) I’ve had to make a whole series of trips to Albuquerque in order to deal with one thing or another. I’m having a new fence installed on our property.

And I’m doing our taxes. Actually I’m not “doing” them, I’m just getting all the relevant documents ready for the accountant. Which is a bigger order than usual, because I was so busy and harassed last year that I didn’t keep my records organized. If I was feeling efficient on that day, I’d put the receipts in the appropriate envelope and label it. If I wasn’t, I chucked the receipts in the wire basket marked “taxes,” perhaps with a cryptic note.

This isn’t an insoluble problem, it’s just a time-consuming one. I generate a lot of receipts in a given year, and now I’m going through them one by one.

And so my time is being consumed, largely by stuff that isn’t any fun. Which is why I needed those get-togethers over the weekend.

What I really need is to hit the “reset” button. Which I am doing next month, because I’m going back to Turkey! For three weeks!

And it’s even tax-deductible (gotta keep those receipts), because the new book is set in Turkey, and I’ll be doing mega-research the whole time I’m there.

I won’t be having fun at all on this trip. Not in Istanbul, not in Ankara, not on the shores of the Aegean.

Work, work, work. That’s my motto.