Hello, friends and fans!
Welcome to another “Peek At My Week” for October 9, 2023! Here are some things that happened this past week!
News About Writing & Publishing: This Is The Current State Of Things
It’s Halloween month! I’m looking forward to seeing people celebrating (or preparing to celebrate) the Halloween season all over the place!
- Writing: My main focus at this time is “Freedom Inc” (book 1 in my new sci-fi adventure series, “Threaders“). The story is now sitting at just over 56,400 words and I’m working on the newest, third part of the envisioned five for this book. Unfortunately, due to a dealing with an abscess and the flu, I’ve been slowed down some over the past week. Hopefully I’ll be able to report back with more impressive progress to you next week!
- Audiobooks: The audiobook for “Xanadu” – book 8 in the Quantum Series, was released on September 30! It’s now available on Amazon and Audible.
- Articles: In the past week, I posted “The Indie Author’s Lament: Sales & Wails” and “Christina Engela’s Monthly Newsletter: #81 October 2023“.
- What Readers Say: I know I can’t please everybody (so I’m not trying to!). That said, it really pleases me when I see that I’ve managed to do it anyway! Drop me a line and let me know how you think I’m doing – or leave me a review on Amazon or Audible!
Bibliography – A listing of all my books:
Other Stuff:
Living To Abscess
I’ve been a little quiet over the last week, and I thought I should fill you in. As of last Monday evening, I started to experience severe toothache brought about by an abscess. On Tuesday I visited the dentist and he confirmed what I pretty much knew already – the root canal job I’d been putting off for a few years’ time had finally come.
Because there was too much swelling, the dentist couldn’t perform the job right away, so I was given some antibiotics and pain meds strong enough to knock over a rhino, and told I’d be contacted very soon.
In the meantime, I returned to work. As a result of the pain and the meds for the pain, I wasn’t in any shape to do much writing – so for that I apologize in advance. Then on Wednesday evening I received a call to come in the following morning at 8 for the root canal.
During the night, I’d also developed swelling on the upper jaw as well, opposite the site of the required root canal on the lower jaw, and it hurt in both places if I bit on anything, or even to close my mouth.
Thus it was that I arrived at the surgery at 8am Thursday morning. Little did I know what I was in for…
I explained the whole situation to the doc – who is probably the most compassionate soul in a dentists’ robe I’ve ever met. After a number of checks and quick x-rays of the area, he set out to work.
Apparently I don’t grind my teeth – I clench. “Are you under any stress?” He asked. How could I not be, I wondered. “Just the usual” I replied, half-jokingly.
He insisted I start sleeping with a mouthpiece to protect my teeth from clenching damage and took a mold of my upper teeth right away. Then he gave me three rounds of jabs to numb things up.
Almost 3 hours later, he was done – I’d had 2 root canals in neighboring molars on the lower jaw and he’d replaced an old, very deep filling in the upper jaw above them. The entire procedure was less painful than the agony I’d been in all week, and although I’ll need to go back in January to replace the temporary fillings with permanent ones, I walked out with a numb face and a lopsided grin.
I had a full 360 “pan-scan” on the way out too, and spent a good few minutes trying to get my earrings back in, but my co-ordination was a bit shot, so in the end I put that off till I got home later.
Exhausted from the days of blinding pain and then also the surgery, I struggled to drive to work, which I did very slowly and carefully. Fortunately, my supervisor took one look at me and then sent me home right away.
Aside from making a trip back up to the surgery to pick up the completed mouth guard in the afternoon, I spent the rest of the day resting. I did my best to keep my other half company on the sofa last night, watching crime documentaries, but started dropping off again somewhere along the line, and got chased to bed.
So far, so good. I haven’t had a pain pill since Thursday morning, and almost no pain at all either.
Wait – There’s A Writers Guild In South Africa? Or… Not
As always, I’ll keep you posted about any further developments. And remember:
In spite of some of my books having been on Amazon since 2005, not one of them has yet reached the magical 51 reader reviews yet! (The highest number any of them has, is 10 – which is a pretty good number compared to many others, but it’s still not high enough for the almighty Amazon!) I would really appreciate your help on this! Come on, leave a review – it’s free!
I wish you all a pleasant week until next time!