Country Life

May and June have been busy in the life category.

I caught a nasty virus at the beginning of May and powered through it until it became pneumonia near the end of the month. During all of that, we sold our house in the suburbs and moved out to the country. The housing market, it seems, had been quite good to us. And although the cough has lingered on, I'm back to my regular exercise routines.

So here we are, almost completely nestled into our new home (built in 1964, so your mileage may vary on whether or not you'd consider it new) and I've finally made time to write a blog post.

Things are beginning to balance out since we've caught up on all the maintenance. The gutters had been neglected to the point plants began to grow out of them. In some areas, heavy vegetation caused them to sag. We power washed the roof since the house faces north, clearing the shingles of the green fuzzy stuff (algae?) that had accumulated over the years.

Probably a good time too to mention the house had been vacant for over a year.

The maintenance on the acreage is still up for debate. We bought the working lawn tractor from the seller at a great price only to have it sputter out on us a quarter of the way when we mowed and we still haven't got it back from the repair shop. However, a good friend of ours dropped by with his zero-turn mower and knocked out the mowing last week. But the rain that has drenched the mid-west has caused the grass to grow faster than normal and we're all beginning to feel like Jordy from Stephen King's Weeds.

Carbon fiber beams have been installed on the sagging basement wall. Because of the generosity of my father, who is a skilled plumber, we got all the basement leaks repaired and soon will have water to the upstairs half bath.

My wife shocked the well. For four days we didn't have clean water but after her effort, the test came back negative (a good thing) and we were able to safely shower and brush our teeth without the use of distilled water. And that wasn't all bad, felt like we were all camping really.

In addition to shocking the well, we had a new water softener unit installed.

Then our washer died. Thankfully, that appliance was covered under the home warranty. Had to pay a little out of pocket for it but was considerably less than what a new washer would've cost us.

We were lucky to have the seller pay for most of the basement repairs. This weekend a super high grade epoxy will be painted on the basement walls to help keep the moisture out.

All in all, we weren't scared of the condition which drew many potential buyers away. The sellers had a heart and understood this is probably the place we'll live in for the remainder of our time here on Earth. We're grateful for their generosity. 

The writing side of my life has been productive. This month saw the release of Dig Two Graves Vol. 1, a revenge anthology. My story "Murdock's Magnificent Emporium" is sandwiched in there with the likes of Christine Morgan, Kenzie Jennings, and Robert Essig, among many other great talents.

I have a book called "An American Monster" pending publication at a dream publishing house. Another book called "Admonition" is still sitting and I'll get to the final edit of that in July before sending to beta-readers and the editor I work with. My plan for Admonition is to query agents with it. If I'm lucky enough to land an agent, then they'll have to sell it. And if my luck still hasn't run out, it'll go through the publishing process which I understand takes longer than publishing with a small press or independently. And that'll be a-okay with me.

Several short stories are out there floating around waiting to be either accepted or rejected.

Currently I'm working on a book called "Best Weekend Ever", where a group of college grads go to a cabin for a bachelor party. The bride and her bridesmaids show up unannounced along with a mob of snakes. I'm about 10,000 words into it. It may turn into a novella. We'll see how much gas is in that tank.

And I just remembered I have a load of laundry to do. More on the country life in the next post. Until then, be good to each other out there.

-Sean