Spring continues to spring forth.
Herkes House is in a pause between Old Home Repair Adventures, so it’s been a joyously quiet week. There’s plenty of writing and reading going on, also much enjoyment of the particular bright green of grass greening up and all the colorful trees and shrubs blooming away.
The last stage of sewer line work is scheduled for end of the month, and then Spouseman & I can contemplate the next Major House Project, which is investing in a whole-house generator for power outages. Which, yeah, I’d rather go solar+batteries with a heat pump for HVAC to boot, but that’s a next-next level major project, for which research has only barely begun.
Visitations and excursions keep filling up the calendar, and I plan to continue filling the quiet in-between days with as much Regular Stuff as possible. (fingers crossed)
Regular stuff, for those just tuning in, consists of writing, reading, watching things, performing kitchen magic, & playing in the dirt outdoors.
So. Here’s what’s happening on those fronts. Writing first, of course.
Progress continues on the “Two Angry Women With Cats Who Hate Their Superpowers” story. It’ll be the first entry in a book tentatively titled A Tiny Box Of Chaos, which I’m intending to be another mosaic novel like Rough Passages, but…we’ll have to see how long this story gets.
With help from my Patreon members, I have chosen photo references for two of the three cats involved. I have yet to find any suitable CC0 images of a giant stray tomcat for the third beast, but I am having loads of fun hunting.
The two main characters’ introductions are written and in their proper order at last, which means I ‘m ready to put them together and Move Things Right Along, plot-wise. (I have the scene: Izzie standing at Nora’s door with an armload of cranky cat, asking for help, but what time of day is it? What is her exact question? What’s Nora doing when Izzy arrives? Will I ever decide on a spelling for Izzy/Izze’s name? All these mysteries will get solved my next desk session.
The week’s going to be busy with non-writing activities, but I started off well. Had a great working session today with my friend Dex. (wherein we both worked on our own things in the same space, had lunch, and talked about life, the universe etc.) Bonus writing-adjacent accomplishment: Dex shared his knowledge of Mailing Things, and I collected & collated everything I needed for doing my own mailings. As soon as my order of envelopes arrives, I’m ready to send out Hope Crow stickers/clings to those who asked!
Reading: Since finishing the 4 existing books in the Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein, I have been consuming more new fiction. The list to date:
Everything by Heather Rose Jones I could lay my hands on. That now comes to, Language of Roses, plus three long and three short works set in her historical fantasy world. (The Alpennia series) They’re closed-door sapphic romances, strong on quiet, interpersonal-focused magiva-adjacent plotlines, light on romantic shenanigans. I absolutely adored them all.
The Adventures Of Mary Darling by Pat Murphy. HOLY MAZOLEY! Okay. How to describe this. Whatever you expect it to be, it probably isn’t. I recommend this post on Mouse Reads Books as a better explainer than anything I could give you. I 100% hope it becomes a Netflix series produced by Shondaland, because it would freaking ROCK in the visual medium as well as print.
The new book in Grace Burrowes’ Bad Heir Day Tales series, because I have not yet lost my love for the fantasy world that is Regency/Victorian Romancelandia.
Next up will be some Hugo Awards voting preparation. I downloaded all the books, but haven’t picked a first read yet. Probably Rebecca Roanhorse, just because.
Watching: I’ve been doing this rewatch of Bones so long I’ve actually forgotten what I was watching before it. After Babylon 5, I mean. Conclave was in there, and the new season of Reacher, and this weekend I started watching The Residence, which is clever, funny, and fabulous. (It’s like Knives Out crossed with The After Party set in the White House, only even better. I swear.)
All I can say about Bones right now is that I am still watching it for the same reason I watch bad disaster movies: to marvel at the many, tiny gems of good writing & acting nestled within a gobsawful substrate of legal system propaganda and wildly inaccurate representation of everything from neurodivergence to modern parenthood.
Perhaps in some future post I will rant at length about the massive cultural damage inflicted by media portrayal of criminal investigators as teams of learned, highly educated professionals with unlimited resources committed to solving singular cases—and who solve them, inevitably, conveniently, in 42 minutes of screen time.
But today is not that day.
Other things. The lawn has had its first mow, big thanks to Spouseman, and I’ve finished what I call spring cleanup in the wildergarden beds. That means relocating the remaining dead stems and leaves of last year’s perennials to the fence line behind shrubs, where they can molder away in peace while providing habitat for bees, fireflies, and other important insects.
The lettuce seeds in the garden boxes are sprouting already, which is awesome. And alongside the house where it’s warmest, the lavender plants are coming out of hibernation. That means it’s warm enough to go New Plant Shopping for my next round of hardy native-ish perennials.
I want to do pumpkins again this year too, of course, but I'‘m running out of empty spaces to plant them in. Vertical is the way to go, but I’ll have to enlist aid in both engineering a sturdy trellis design and then some folks with healthy hands & joints to help make it happen.
So many planting ideas, only one yard to put them all in.
That’s it for this update, except for the most important part of any post: cat pics. I was feeling fancy, so I made a photo collage this time. It was easier than I expected. Might do it again.
Until later!
image description: Pippincat in various poses of relaxation, sometimes in his box on the kitchen counter, and sometimes in the office napping nook, always looking magnificent and fluffy.
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
Relics From A Traveling Show
The newest of the new! A collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume, available now from your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound
Be a potato.
" Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)