Last night the cat cuddled with me while I started reworking Early Retyrement.

It’s going very slowly.

I originally finished this book around 2000 (that’s the oldest filedates I’ve discovered regarding this). Since then, I wrote a published novel, a published help book, three unpublished manuscripts, 200-plus radio scripts, a half-dozen short stories, even some freelanced erotica. In a way, it’s like going back to visit with a younger, cruder me, someone rough around the edges, lacking refinement (and I was 41 then, ferchristsakes!). Amazing to see these windy, twisty, wasteful sentences. Daunting to see my main character (and even, sometimes, my scenery) overreact. Very strange to take a crude paragraph and rework it with the tricks I know now, to tighten it up, turn its screws, make it hum.

But road-grading a novel takes time. Then we’ve got test readers to bribe, artists to find, an ISBN to secure, all that stuff.

I’m going to be 61 when this is over.