March 21, 2026 · 3:10 PM

Random Week

Had a few tech fights, but nothing I didn’t prevail upon, eventually. I’m pretty sure everyone has some of these.

Weather went from freezing to the eighties overnight. It has my eyes all goopy and my sinuses are bugging me.

Old What’s Her Face had me plant her a tulip tree years ago. These things only give you about a week to enjoy them, and the wind is absolutely shredding it today.

My peach is in full bloom. I’m not convinced we are past freezes, so I took a picture and updated my blog wallpaper. If I don’t wind up with fruit, there will at least have been flowers.

I struggled with Lizzie and the hat. These struggles are unique to this series, because it is an ongoing series. Some of you authors might appreciate some of this. Long-term readers know that I have spent time building a real environment around Lizzie. She has friends both mundane and supernatural.

I owe it to any new readers to at least flesh some of this out when it comes to her inner circle. How much to dedicate to that is where my concerns lie. We all read more than just one book or series, so a bit of a refresher is okay, too. Somewhere out there is a fine line between one set of readers and another.

Moving characters around is always a tough point for me. At one time, I have Lizzie pulling a shift at the diner. Should we live through this, or find a way to jump ahead to where more important things are happening. I could have customers talking about the “murders” and make it a bit suspenseful. Fortunately, in The Hat Series I have one tool I could not use anywhere else. Here is how I handled it and allowed myself to move on.

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Whether this is just my placeholder or it winds up in the final product remains to be seen. General gossip is a good place for red herrings and plants that might pay off later. In this way, I give myself permission to move along, but also reserve the right to come back later if I need to. Note: These little graphics are part of the humor of this series. I couldn’t do this with other stories.

I got her to Good Liniment, the witch bar, and left her debating food with Arne one of the half-ogre caretakers. Eventually, she will do a bunch of research there, and probably get into it with Professor Lagomorph.

I managed to flesh out my next Story Empire post and got it scheduled. The one about the punk genres is performing pretty well.

That’s about it from Idaho. Wasn’t as productive as I dreamed, but it never is. It wasn’t a dead stop either. Hope all of you had a good week, and invite you to tell me what you’ve gotten up to.

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March 14, 2026 · 9:54 AM

I am a Cretin

Weird blog post today, but that kind of feeds into the theme along with the rest of it. Did you ever find yourself in a position of just not getting something that everyone else raves about? Happens to me every once in a while.

This is the part where you can call me a cretin. On two separate occasions, decades apart, I tried to read Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I know everyone thinks this is wonderful, and have even been told that my comedic genes would love it. I never have been able to finish it, and won’t try again. I just don’t get the hype. Wouldn’t be surprised to get strange comments about everyone’s favorite story.

It recently happened again. I heard that several of the streamers are going to lean heavily into cyberpunk soon. One is even planning a Neuromancer series. Ah-ha! I thought. I’ve never read Neuromancer and now is a perfect time for it. I started with a chapter every other day, that soon drifted to every week. After a two week lull someone came to my rescue.

I am just not stoned enough to understand Gibson’s words and lack of any coherent plot. This doesn’t speak bad for the pending series, a lot of the visuals won’t require seven pages of description I have to slog through and might just show up on the screen, allowing for whatever plot might appear in later chapters to actually show up. Not holding my breath, but trying to remain positive.

Once Upon a Time, I added a book to my reading list, but never got to it. I dodged out because it is LitRPG. I’ve never been a fan of those holographic stats and the requirement to level up inside a novel. I’ve read a few, but there always seemed to be another option.

The other day Teri Polen called me out by name on one of her book review posts. What do you know? It was this same old book from my reading list. Teri said she thinks it is similar to some of my own books in the comedic sense.

Her timing was perfect. There I was suffering through Neuromancer. I have a hard time not finishing a book, and try to finish everything I start. Then Teri showed up dangling something that actually sounded fun.

I bought Dungeon Crawler Carl and never looked back. I am about 25% of the way through and can’t wait to get back. There is a big difference in reading as a chore, or reading because something is genuinely fun. Cracks me up that the cat is more powerful than Carl. In fact, a lot of his hard luck circumstances fit right into my style of humor. I will finish this one for sure, and may even pick up one of the subsequent books.

There you have it. If you’re into movies think of it this way. Given a chance to watch Kramer vs Kramer or Porky’s, sign me up for Porky’s every time.

In other news, I’ve been writing. I introduced a cute old couple having a strange night out. Went out of my way to make them interesting and likeable. Then I brutally murdered them, as one does when you write books.

My next chapter is a requirement for these ongoing series books. Long term readers might appreciate a refresher. New readers need at least some environment built before we get up and running. You know the kind of things; this is Lizzie, this is the hat, she has a circle of friends, etc. I am only using the friends I need in each book, but it helps to know these are existing relationships just in case you’ve read anything since the last Hat Series book.

I have an appointment for lunch next week with a bunch of retirees. At one point all of us did the same job. One took a promotion, one retired, then I retired, then the one who got promoted retired. We haven’t seen each other for a couple of months. It was a proper old man club, and we did a lot of good work in our time. I’m excited to catch up with them. They picked St. Patrick’s Day, so I have to avoid the Rueben sandwich. Old What’s Her Face is making a huge corned beef for supper that day. The menu doesn’t matter anyway. Just checking in with the guys will be good enough.

I’m going back to Dungeon Crawler Carl. Drop me a note. Tell me how awful I am for not being able to finish these classics. Agree with me if you’re feeling generous. How is life treating everyone?

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March 7, 2026 · 7:46 AM

This week in Craigland

Spent some quality time with Article V and decided I liked it. Still a short novel, but those are kind of popular anyway. Did my word searches. Once I was happy, I reached out to my formatter. Sent her the Paypal, and will forward the MS after I finish here.

Did I return to my space opera like I should have? Oh no. I wrote the first chapter of the next Hat story. I put a working title on it of “The One With the Giant Killer Moth.” I know that’s kind of a spoiler in some ways, but this whole series is supposed to be comedic. If noting else occurs to me I might leave it. It works within the framework.

I like the chapter, too. Such nice old people out having fun, at least until the end of the chapter.

Old What’s Her Face got called in at midnight three times this week. This equates to total chaos around here. Over the years I have stayed up until midnight, gone to bed early, and split the difference. I am not the difficult part. Frankie the bulldog thinks it disrupts her whole universe. She paces and whines, and with hard surface flooring pacing is an audio event. She even goes in and whines at my wife. If you put the stairs by the bed she gets up, but gets back down and repeats the whole cycle.

It also is strange for my sleep cycle. I was used to getting up at 4:00, but since retirement it has drifted to about 5:00-5:30. The shift work changed some of that, but it was in my favor on Tuesday.

I wound up rising at 4:00. After feeding the dog, I just missed the best part of the eclipse. There was a bit of ground fog, but I still did the modern thing and took a picture:

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I don’t think the iPhone was designed as a celestial camera, but there it is anyway. The fog probably didn’t help, but I howled at the eclipse at four-a.m. anyway.

My intentions are to start bouncing back and forth between The Hat Series and the space trilogy. I’ll probably spend more effort on Hat. It’s always fun when they’re new and haven’t hit the middle slog. Note: In a trilogy that slog is looooong.

Hope everyone is doing well. Drop me a line. Did you finish a project, start a new one, check out the eclipse?

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February 28, 2026 · 3:22 PM

IOS Update

Wound up getting a bit of editing done this week. Not nearly enough, but it happened. Things are getting closer.

Added some new characters to the sheet for a future story. This one is complex and I am not going to jump into it half-assed. I will have enough characters and side stories to make sure it stays interesting and reaches novel length. For this one I will even make a full storyboard. Tentative title is The Hyde Event. It will be near future science fiction.

I don’t even plan on starting it until I can nudge the space trilogy ahead by a dozen chapters and probably write the next Hat story completely. This bit of SF is going to be my long game for now.

Evenings were for Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. It was good, but I am disappointed at only getting six episodes. Streaming seems to only do eight to ten episode seasons, but six feels awfully thin, particularly when one was wasted on backstory that wasn’t really needed here. Anyone else watched this one?

Watched the first new episode of Monarch last night. Honestly, I should have waited. I do better when I can watch a couple at a time. Still, sign me up for anything with Godzilla in it.

Did the update on my iPad and all was well. For some reason I waited a couple of days to get it on my phone and it screwed everything up. This involves facial recognition, which I had to reset and it still isn’t working correctly. Good thing I have a secret stash of passwords so I can access all my apps and stuff until I can get it functional again.

PERSI came through once more and I got the bills paid. With or without facial recognition I am functional on that front.

SSA won’t pay until late March so there might be a bit of a learning curve on that bit of budgeting.

As I assemble this post today, I can see that I need to do more. I have been walking in the mornings and all that, but I can probably squeeze in an extra chapter of edits here and there. I need to hurry up and finish the book I’ve been reading. Maybe a bit more focus would help. The dog is doing great and I don’t have to watch her like a hawk like I was doing.

What is happening in your area? Drop me a line.

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February 21, 2026 · 3:03 PM

My weekly update

Lot’s of distractions this week, including keeping an eye on the dog who is improving every day.

I started my editing passes on Article V. It is slow going, but probably should be. I am reading a classic, but not dedicating much time to that either. It has been kind of a slog and doesn’t really allow for long stretches. I find myself having to pause and absorb.

My wife picked up something at the store for me that was a wonderful surprise. It is called Goose Island Bourbon County Stout. This stuff is like ambrosia. I’ve only had one a couple of nights ago, but might go there again after this posts.

Three of the “old guys” from work are going to get together for lunch on Tuesday. I am looking forward to that, but really don’t have anything new to share. We all retired from the same hellhole and I’m just excited to see them all.

Lately, I have been on a bit of an apple mission. I’ve been buying the bags of five to seven. This means they are the B-grades and could be a bit misshapen or even smaller than the ones that go in the display areas of the store. Doesn’t affect the way they eat.

The good news is that none of them are bad. I enjoyed the Honeycrisps, but they might be a little softer than some of the others. Fujis were crunchy and sweet. I tried a new-to-me one called Sugar Bee. These were also good, but they have a mighty skin on them. We’re talking the kind of skin where you need dental floss afterward.

Fuji’s are probably my favorite so far, but there is a bag of Galas waiting for me in the refrigerator.

I decided to binge watch Monarch just to get ready for the new season coming up. This season dropped in 2023, and I forget a lot of stuff when they take three years between seasons. This is just how modern streaming works and I should be excited when my favorites get a second season at all. I should think about the last season of The Boys before the final season drops in a month or two.

I hope all of you had a good week and are enjoying your weekend. Drop me a comment and let me know what you’re up to these days.

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February 14, 2026 · 10:41 AM

Still adjusting

I am finding the adjustment to retired life difficult. I frequently find myself multitasking and stressing over getting everything done, then I slap my forehead and go, “Oh yeah, I don’t have to do that any more.”

Progress is happening, but not on formal word count. There was some of that, but I also started a character sheet for something new. It isn’t even to the point of a storyboard right now, but progress is there. I did a bunch of things on the Story Empire front and scheduled my next post.

My big relaxation plan came to a screeching halt last night. I cracked open my last Belgian Triple and turned on the first episode of Season Two of Fallout. I intended to make it a binge kind of night.

I never got to the end of that episode. Frankie needed out for her favorite outside water. I opened the door for her and decided to take my own break. When I returned I saw her on her back, half on the patio, and half on the lawn, and surrounded by vomit. Her little legs were kicking and she was choking.

I managed to upright her and she coughed up some more. This is the second time something like this has happened to her. She plays hard, drinks too much water (colder at that) too fast, and it comes back up. The last time led to her being overnight in an oxygen kennel and cost nearly $2000.

We didn’t wait this time. She did aspirate again, and they wanted to keep her again. We dropped $970 and brought her home. She is a little slow today, but seems otherwise fine. She will be taking antibiotics for a week.

Anyway, aside from dog watch, life is trying to get back to normal. I will pick Fallout back up this afternoon. This leads me to a story.

I grew up listening to Marty Robbins. My mom had the LP of Gunfighter Ballads and I still remember that weird pink background color. He was a family favorite and I even got to see him live at the old Salt Palace in SLC. That album got a ton of play on the old stereo. This was the kind where you could put a stack of LPs on the spindle and play them all. It came in a big wooden cabinet.

This leads me back to Fallout. You probably have to appreciate dark humor and stylized violence as much as I do, but this might be the best ten minutes of television that I have seen in years.

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February 9, 2026 · 10:10 AM

The saga of Craig

Last week was busy for all the wrong reasons. I have been looking for my first Social Security check and it has not shown up. In a perfect world it would be somewhere around the middle of the month and not at the same time as my pension check. This makes things easier for budgeting around here.

Out of curiosity, I did some checking on the process. The SSA website has basically a three bar tracking system. My tracker only had two bars full. I applied and they accepted my application on December 9th. The second bar said it was processed somewhere in Kansas City. Then nothing. (Note: they said they needed 30 days to process. It had been nearly 60.)

I elected to call the Boise SSA office. This led to a bot conversation, then being politely told there would be a 45 minute wait and to please enjoy their hold music. I had no other options so this is what I did.

When the woman finally came on the line she said, “Oh no. Kansas City has nothing to do with this. You have an assigned worker in Seattle. Oh, but he’s not logged into Teams, so I can’t reach out to him. I will send him an email and he will call you back.” I was given zero other options.

This led to 48 hours of being with my phone, night and day, and becoming a smelly bugger because I just knew he would call while I was bathing. He did not.

I called again and this time endured a 50 minute hold cycle. I got a young man on the phone who said, “This isn’t right. Let me fix it for you right now.” I explained that I have a bill for Medicare Part B they expect me to pay, but it was supposed to come out of Social Security. He said he was taking care of everything and not to pay that bill. He told me I am scheduled to get a deposit on the third Wednesday of every month, but that he would accelerate this payment one time for February and it will go into my account on Wednesday this week. He told me to anticipate five weeks before the next one because of this.

I felt pretty good about it all, and even better when messages from SSA started rolling in to let me know he actually did what he said he would.

I’m still a little questionable about whether I should pay the one Medicare bill, but I’m working on faith right now. That call from Seattle… yeah, still waiting for that one.

Honestly, this drained a lot of energy, but I needed to pour myself into some kind of fiction work. I spent Saturday and Sunday getting caught back up on my Space Opera. This is 1.5 volumes long and is intended to become 3 entire novels. I also fixed three typos.

Old What’s Her Face returns on Wednesday and I am her driver. Spoke to her this morning and she is ready to be home. Sounds like our daughter is doing great.

I’ll make the blog rounds, run through emails, then I might even add a few paragraphs to my Space Opera. It’s a lot more fun than Social Security Opera.

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February 1, 2026 · 6:19 AM

Still batching it

Old What’s Her Face is still in New Hampshire. It sounds like our daughter is doing very well. She has to sleep sitting up for now, so they bought her a recliner.

Around here I am still starting most mornings with a walk. Some of them have been pretty cold, but they encourage me to keep moving.

By using my newly available time I managed to finish the first draft of Article V. There is a bunch of work to do still, and I am going to set it aside for a while so I can look at it with fresh eyes later.

This one is going to be a short novel. This can actually be good news for shoppers. You get a fairly tight roller coaster ride and don’t have to chew your way through an old-fashioned door stopper. It has some interesting puzzles inside, which is something new to me.

In other news my furnace failed. Of course this kind of thing only happens on weekends when the rates are higher. I spent most of yesterday trying to keep Frankie and myself warm. Even braved the old gas fireplace that had not been turned on in years. The floor dweller is fine, so CO poisoning must not have been a risk.

The guy showed up at around 4:30 and whatever he did has everything functional once more.

My new focus for a while might be learning how to make my own cover art, and storyboarding a new project. I can easily dive into something from Lizzie and the hat, but this concept probably needs more of a roadmap.

Honestly, it’s nice to have bits of time for notes and storyboards again.

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January 28, 2026 · 10:06 AM

Dragging through it right now

Yesterday was my daughter’s big surgery. This was supposed to involve cracking her rib cage open to remove what is called a thymic cyst. This was predicted to be the size of a lime and it is pushing on her aorta and causing a multitude of problems.

Scans and radiology aren’t perfect. Once they started the procedure they discovered the cyst is much larger than they thought. This led to a full sternotomy and not just a couple of ribs.

Of course we are 2000 miles away and get what dribbles and drabs we can, but the rumor is it all worked out fine. She is going to be in the hospital for days.

Her pseudo husband cannot be with her and she needs someone. His work is brutal and demanding. We arranged everything in advance for Old What’s Her Face to be there for a week. Based upon post operative updates this is now going to be two weeks.

This extra week has caused her issues at work, but she got her way in the end. (I’ve known her for decades and I never doubted that outcome.) Someone has to be with our daughter, and she is 2000 miles from friends and family.

Today started at 2:00 a.m. so I could take my wife to the airport. I’m not highly motivated, but over the weekend I finished my novel with the exception of the denouement chapter.

Probably won’t get a lot more done today.

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January 22, 2026 · 5:39 PM

Today in Idaho

Governor DeSantis travelled to Boise today to address our legislature. We were chosen with purpose. Idaho is strongly, let’s say “Red.” Idaho also has a balanced budget amendment.

DeSantis wants the US to have a similar amendment which isn’t a bad idea. The way he went about it is what concerns me. DeSantis framed the possibility of calling for an Article Five Constitutional Convention.

This part is frightening. Nobody knows what guardrails there would be and it has never been done before. Once convened they could throw the whole Constitution away and create a new one. Consider that whoever is in power would be in the driver’s seat for this theoretical event. Personally, I am against either side pulling this off.

What is means to me personally is that I need to get busy and finish this:

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I have two or three chapters to go, and am debating one tiny change to the cover.

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