Sorry, Loyal Readers, it’s been a helluva couple of weeks.

Between my last post and today, life has been topsy-turvy.  As many of you may face as well, I’ve been juggling the simultaneous challenges of a new job, new home-ownership, getting used to a pay-cut and new expenses (where the HELL is all my money going every month), and now a cross-country trip and a month-long service school on an out-of-pocket shoestring budget.  I’ve been missing my family and I’ve been unable to re-establish any sort of literary routine.

Then I found out about the tragic death of a friend on the other side of the country.  My pain and my wife’s pain is nothing compared to the pain felt by our friend’s husband or her parents or family, but it is still a pain that we are suffering in relative isolation.  I want nothing more than to hold my wife and comfort her, and she and I want to be there for our friend’s husband (who is also our friend), but there are issues of time, distance, and finance preventing it.  Facebook has been a help in this, but it is not nearly enough.

But I have been writing.  Script work continues on Strategic Deployment, plus I have completed the extensive re-write of ILYAMY.  It is a bit of a maudlin tale, but it matches my mood.  And though it was initially written well before this recent accident that stole away our friend, and has nothing to do with her, it’s title is a poignant enough link.  So I am dedicating this latest short story to the memory of Jackie Price Dunn. 

For the next ten days or so, I’ll have ILYAMY up on the website here.  I hope you’ll read it, I hope you’ll like it, and I hope you’ll send me a note with any comments or suggestions you have for it.  At the end of that time, I’ll be bringing it down, polishing it up, and sending it off to make the magazine acceptance/rejection rounds.  I encourage your thoughts and suggestions.  And thanks for reading and sticking with me.