I am way behind in my Not-a-Blogging, I know.<\/p>\n
Along with a thousand other things.<\/p>\n
I was traveling in Europe from July 15 to August 15. \u00a0\u00a0 I do not travel with a computer (never have), so I had hoped to catch up before I left… but it was hard, hard.\u00a0\u00a0 The first half of my year was pretty miserable, dominated as it was by the death of Howard Waldrop on January 14.\u00a0 Howard was my oldest friend in science fiction community; we had been corresponding since 1963, when we were both in high school.\u00a0 His passing came suddenly, only six days after our last conversation,\u00a0 and there’s a part of me that still cannot accept it, that wants to pick up the phone and ring him up and hear his voice again.<\/p>\n
Nor did I find much solace in my work.\u00a0\u00a0 Writing came hard, and though I did produce some new pages on both THE WINDS OF WINTER (yes) and BLOOD & FIRE (the sequel to FIRE & BLOOD, the second part of my Targaryen history), I would have liked to turn out a lot more.\u00a0\u00a0 My various television projects ate up most of those months. \u00a0 Some of that was pleasant (DARK WINDS, and THE HEDGE KNIGHT), most of it was not. \u00a0 The stress kept mounting, the news went from bad to worse to worst,\u00a0 my mood seemed to swing between fury and despair, and at night I tossed and turned when I should have been sleeping. \u00a0 When I did sleep, well, my dreams were none too pleasant either.<\/p>\n
I had been planning our European trip for some time.\u00a0 The Dunk & Egg show would start\u00a0 filming in July and I wanted to visit the shoot in Northern Ireland, and a month later there would be a worldcon in Glasgow.\u00a0\u00a0 I had not been to a worldcon since the Dublin convention in 2019 (we won’t count Covid Con, the New Zealand worldcon in 2020 that went all virtual) and I wanted to return.\u00a0\u00a0 Fandom had been my second family since 1971, and worldcon our family reunion.\u00a0\u00a0 Even so, I had so much on my plate that I seriously debated whether I should cancel the whole trip so I could stay home and fight on.\u00a0\u00a0 I am glad I decided against that.\u00a0\u00a0 I was so stressed out that I doubt I would have accomplished much anyway… and the trip turned out to be a blessing, balm for my bruised soul.<\/p>\n
We had a great time on the trip, and I meant to tell you all about our adventures and experiences when we returned.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Those will be happy posts, made of happy memories, and I still mean to write them… soon…<\/p>\n
But when we finally got back to the Land of Enchantment I had a thousand emails waiting for me.\u00a0 I also managed to bring covid back home with me, after picking it up at worldcon. \u00a0 It was a mild case, thankfully, but even so, it put me out of action for a week or so, with the worst sore throat of my life.\u00a0 (I am fully\u00a0 recovered and testing negative once again, thank you.\u00a0 Don’t get covid, boys and girls, it is no fun at all).\u00a0 And, alas, the moment I opened my computer again, the stress came rushing back.\u00a0\u00a0 I managed to put my problems aside for a month, but they were still waiting for me.<\/p>\n
So… I have a lot to blog about.\u00a0\u00a0 Big things, small things, glad news and sad news.\u00a0\u00a0 I do want to talk about the trip while it is still fresh in my mind, but there is so much else…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am way behind in my Not-a-Blogging, I know. Along with a thousand other things. I was traveling in Europe from July 15 to August 15. \u00a0\u00a0 I do not travel with a computer (never have), so I had hoped to catch up before I left… but it was hard, hard.\u00a0\u00a0 The first half of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218],"tags":[58,33,40,19],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9017"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9159,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9017\/revisions\/9159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}