My heart starts skipping a beat

Status Report 2022-04-04

(Sorry, I forgot to send this yesterday, so apologies. Too much on just now!)

Well, the music this week is:

Yes, that’s Gandalf playing a vampire. Not the least-convincing performance in the video, I have to say.

Okay, so the biggest news is that my heart has slipped back into Atrial Flutter. Not from pushing it too hard, from too much caffeine, from drinking, from mad exercise with the dog. No.

I had a frozen fruit smoothie.

Seems like it’s a thing. I know of someone who got it from an ice cube. And my first time with this was triggered by a kefir smoothie made using frozen fruit. I thought it was the kefir, but no. It was the frozen fruit, both times.

Anyway, I’m booked in for a cardioversion on the 19th, which will (fingers cross) correct my heartbeat and I’m back on the devil drugs, though I’m feeling fine. Oddly fine. Last time, I think it was an interaction between ibuprofen and my blood thinners. Unreal.

I don’t feel too down about it. Now I know what triggers it, I won’t drink anything colder than tap water (I’ll have to eat ice cream at room temperature). And assuming the operation is successful, it’ll be a day shy of four weeks from start to finish. Last time it was four months.

Last week

I’ve been working. Like a demon actually.

I finished my self-edit of Guilt Trip, which involved adding in a new day because it’s almost impossible for cops to visit an inmate at 23:30 at night. Ahem. Shuffled a few things about, but I’ve done so much gender swapping of characters that there’s bound to be some pronoun hell going on in that, but I’ve got until May the 4th be with you to get it edited and ship shape for copy edit.

Quite proud of it, as it happens. A lot of stuff came to me as I was writing it, so it was fun to be able to free wheel a bit and have a solid idea of where it was going. Long-term readers will hopefully get something out of it, if you catch my drift.

And if you don’t, it’s out on the 1st July and you can preorder it here: UK | US | ROW

This week

Can anyone can help me decipher this review for the paperback edition of Lost Cause?

Must be a glitch as that’s almost four years before the book is to be released.

Anyway, writing-wise, I’m back to SCIFI BOOK 1. Made all my edits based on the two I’ve had so far and I think it’s in a better place. The character thread is much clearer now, but whether it’s clear enough, we shall see. I’ll do a slower edit over the next week or so and try to get it ship-shape before my zap.

And that’s me. Hope you’re all okay out there. Bessi made some progress — there’s a red setter she’s seen a few times and they did a very distant Mexican standoff without her going too loopy. It’s going to take a lot of time, but we’ll get there.

Cheers,
Ed