Well, I have finally begun chapter 3 of Rabbit Rue, which I’m beginning to suspect, is coming along much better than I had anticipated. Would you believe I had a dream about this whole thing, or at least a tiny fraction of how it all would end, roughly four years ago? Admittedly I started a book I’ve dubbed The Phase way back in 1999 for a girl I met on the internet, and that got all the way to 50 pages before we broke the whole thing off, since she lived in Alpha, a harrowing 90-mile drive from my residence near Cedar Rapids at the time. This wasn’t intentional, but I’ve re-jiggered the story so it fits the overall mythos of other dreams I’ve had. So you see, Rabbit Rue is only the beginning. I have at least four books, entire books consisting of several hundred pages lined up already, though I only have a vague concept of a conclusion for each. Stephen King admitted he writes this way, so I’m not exactly breaking new ground.

Though I was starting to get ahead of schedule with Rabbit Rue, there was a minor setback as I was unable to write over the weekend. Not to say hanging out with Jen is some terrible inconvenience, but while trying to build between myself and my schedule, an appreciable buffer, I nevertheless lost ground. To compensate, I’ve redoubled my efforts to fill the hopper with at least a week’s worth of content. Every day will witness me writing feverishly, so the current Monday, Wednesday, and Friday publication schedule can remain in effect. And of course, here is my usual entreaty to read it.

Many apologies! I tried tweaking my http config file and ended up sending my new writing site to the old non-functional mockup. Doh! Anyway, the second part of chapter one should automatically publish itself around midnight tonight, so you’ll be able to read it tomorrow. I added a disclaimer so people who first hit the site will know to read from the beginning.

Some or even most of you are probably wondering where I’ve been for the past two weeks. My posting frequency has been eclipsed by the ever silent Justin, and for that I apologize. Normally this would mean I have been lazy playing videogames or otherwise frittering away my time. On this particular occasion, nothing could be further from the truth. For the past week, I’ve been busily hacking away at a Django app which will serve as the launchpad for my Webfic based on the Kildosphere mythos I’ve been slowly accumulating in my addled brain. Many late nights into the wee hours I have toiled, trying to get the system functional and fully cached. Though the result is still in need of work, and I likely need to tweak the design, I have reached a final product worthy of unleashing upon the unsuspecting populace.

After three weeks of wearing glasses, I’ve been getting somewhat impatient to resume contact wear. To that end, my followup appointment came up yesterday. As expected, a topographical scan of my corneas revealed they have indeed reverted to some ideal state unencumbered by daily plastic assaults. The doctor described my eyes as a textbook example of healthy corneas, astigmatism and myopia notwithstanding. Apparently the contacts had been slightly flattening the surface, slightly suppressing my astigmatism by about one point. For those of you with normal eyes, most people with corrective lenses don’t even have one point of astigmatism, evidenced by the rarity of toric contact lenses. I have over four points, and the contacts had reduced the worst eye to 3.5. This would explain why my vision slowly deteriorated after getting my new glasses. As my corneas healed, my glasses which were only designed for 3.5 points of astigmatism had to suddenly correct 4.5.