11:02pm

All right… as long as I don’t wax too eloquent, I should be able to get this posted before midnight. Which means no fudging with the post time so that it matches the post title.

That’s always nice.

But I already digress!

I’m a day late on my weekly writing update. On the one side, it’s not good, because I want to build a habit and always make that post on Saturday for anyone who cares to see it. But on the other hand, it’s totally okay, because yesterday was a lazy day after an awesome chiropractor (chiro) appointment on Friday.

As you’ll see in the graphic below, my total words for March sit at 43,509 as of Saturday. I’ve just finished adding to that before starting this post, but you’ll have to wait a week to see my new total. (Yes… I am that evil.)

As of Saturday, I was within 3,000 words of exceeding January’s word count. I have exceeded the word count from March of 2024 by almost a factor of eight (8). In fact the only months from 2024 I haven’t already exceeded in March alone are July and September, and my writing just this evening (Sunday the 25th) put this month’s total beyond that of September of 2024. I only have July left to beat.

I finished The Crystal Plinth on Wednesday (March 19th). It came in at 38,247 words across 15 chapters. The first actual story in the Changed Earth series will be The Huntsman, but I have some worldbuilding to finalize before I truly dive into it… not to mention two and a half Shepherd Security novels to finish.

Not sure when I’ll release this new series quite yet, but Crystal Plinth will be its newsletter story. The series will be a LitRPG Fantasy, but the LitRPG elements dont arrive/appear until the very end of Crystal Plinth.

Next Monday (the 31st), a long-term dream is coming to fruition. That’s the date fiber internet will be installed here at the house. I haven’t re-downloaded Cyberpunk 2077 yet after switching to Linux for my gaming box. In fact, I’ve been waiting for the fiber install to do it. I don’t know that I’ll actually play through Cyberpunk again, but given that the download is almost 100GB after all the patches and the Phantom Liberty DLC, I will definitely enjoy recording the download and posting here as a video.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a major proponent of Starlink, especially when one doesn’t have a better option. However… fiber is definitely a better option.

I will keep the Starlink equipment to have as a backup for cases when the fiber goes out (which will most likely be due to a gravity-assisted tree), but I hope those instances are few and far between.

The biggest impediment to writing this week (March 23rd through 29th) will be the necessary preparations for the fiber installation. Yes, I know… they’re responsible for getting it into the house, but I would much rather control that by having the pass-through that I want all ready to go with a pull string waiting. I’ll ask the installation tech to measure out the fiber, terminate it outside, and then just connect everything inside. With the pull string and pass-through I want to create, getting the terminated fiber into the house will be fairly straightforward.

I’m looking forward to that.

Alrighty. I’ve jabbered on long enough. If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking with me.

Best wishes to you and yours. Stay safe out there.