I'M BACK!

 OR: ON BEING ANALOG IN A DIGITAL AGE.

Computers are wonderful things.

My old system, so to speak.

Until they break down and become nothing more than oversize, useless paperweights.

I was without a computer since December 26, 2023 until sometime the week before this was posted.

All I really had to work with was my cellphone📱, along with a few pens and a lot of paper.

Every word written during that time was in long hand.

Does anyone even still remember how to write in cursive beyond signing their name nowadays?

Anyway, I'm still trying to transcribe all my notes into a coherent manuscript. Thankfully between multiple flash cards/drives I was able to recreate all my files, but work on SOLITAIRE 2: THE AGENDA is on hold at the moment because—what I eluded to last time but didn't get the chance to reveal before now because of being involuntarily offline for so long—is that I have been asked to contribute a story to Robert J. Mendenhall's CODE NAME INTREPID series! 😀

CODE NAME INTREPID CONFIDENTIAL, VOLUME 1 came out last fall and is on the ballot for BEST PULP ANTHOLOGY in this year's Pulp Factory Awards! 😁

Volume 2 is scheduled for a Spring (March or April) 2024 release.

My story, along with everyone else contributing to Volume 3, is scheduled to be out sometime this fall.

I have a 7,500 minimum to 10,000 maximum word limit and, now that Mendenhall approved my plot, the story itself is due by June 1, 2024.

For those unfamiliar with the series, CODE NAME INTREPID is a team with representatives from every branch of the United States Military Services investigating "the unusual" while trying to stop the Sonderstaffel, whose mission is to gather every possible weapon and artifact of supernatural or unknown origin that could aid the Axis/Nazis in the days before World War 2 began; which would be September 1, 1939 for Europe and December 7, 1941 for the United States.

While obviously a work of fiction, everything has to be as historically accurate as possible, hence all the research I had to do via my cellphone and trust me. On that device, I don't set any texting speed records as it is so typing Google requests, let alone attempting to read the results on such a small screen was really "fun".

But now I have a working computer again and am trying to get back up to speed even as you read these words.

With that in mind I better get back to writing now.

Take care.

STAY SAFE! 😷 (I was gone for so long, Google changed the Blogger emoticons on me!)

And I'll see you around the Internet.

Lee Houston, Junior

18 February, 2024