I'm baaaack! Kind of.

It's been a good six weeks since the surgery, a bit of a long recovery, but I'm fine now, and THANK YOU GOD I CAN DRIVE THE CAR AT LAST.

I didn't think it'd be such a big deal, but five weeks without driving a car in a place where you have to walk a good mile to the bus stop, which only comes around every half an hour, and doesn't come around but once every couple of hours in the evening....well, it's hell. That's what it is. Bad enough I was walking around crouched over like a primate ancestor, holdiing my stomach so as to keep my innards from sloshing about too much inside. I couldn't walk much except maybe to the mailbox across the street, and I broke out in a sweat doing that.

The doctor wanted me to wait until six weeks went by for me to drive, but I think I did a good convincing act of cheerful, perky patient, and strong--yes, exceedingly strong and full of vim and vigor, that's me!--despite continuing (but improving!) anemia, so she said yes at 5 weeks. Was a bit tricky getting into the car and out again, but it was worth the freedom to go about as I pleased.

Meanwhile, I have been busy writing, writing, writing when I didn't go brain-dead from fatigue, and spinning and knitting when it did. Luckily, I can knit and spin yarn with a less than fully-functioning brain, so produced some nice items for my church's holiday fair. I am boasting, and have even displayed some of the items here:

http://homepage.mac.com/karenharbaugh/Craftitems/PhotoAlbum2.html

And then the writing. I hope to finish the novella ("Dragon Lord" to be in the Dragon Magic anthology, along with stories by Mary Jo Putney, Jo Beverley, and Barbara Samuel) by the end of this week, and the novel for Bantam--now called Midnight Surrender by, please God, December 15th. Wish me luck on that.

I am enjoying the writing when I'm not dead tired. The dragon story is something different: set in 1660's Japan, the hero Japanese, the heroine Dutch. There is a dragon, or ryu-kami, which is a sort of...hmm...animal spirit/god/totem. A dragon-kami. It's SO nice writing something different and in a different time and setting than what I have been writing. I think I have some nice anime and Kurosawa moments in it, if I do say so myself. Looks like I can write much faster if I'm not stuck writing on the same theme, subject, or era all the time.

The other is a vampire romance, set in about 1796, England. The hero is a spymaster and an official in Britain's Home Office, and the heroine is a vampire, an erstwhile missionary and now prostitute. It's a bit complicated to explain...so I don't think I will. :-)

So...back to the treadmill, nose to the grindstone, and all that kind of cliche. I'll be gone for a bit because of all this work, and I don't even want to think of Thanksgiving preparations right now. But once I finish the novella, I'll put an excerpt on my web site. I promise! Ditto the novel.

Meanwhile, if you want to procrastinate by looking at things on the internet, go view my August trip out to Pullman Washington, when my husband and I took the Alien Child out to Washiington State University and abandoned him there. Or, at least that's what it felt like to me, especially after the ungrateful boy said, "okay Mom, Dad, you can GO now!" It's not as if we were dawdling THAT long.

http://homepage.mac.com/karenharbaugh/PhotoAlbum1.html

If you look carefully, you can see the face of an ape in two of the pictures of the Columbia River cliffs. My hubby was peering at them, and exclaimed, "Look, an ape!" Since I doubted apes were native to Washington state, I had to suppose he was looking at something that seemed like one, and sure enough, there it was. So, I took a picture of it.

--Karen H.