Look at this! I got the newsletter out on time! Granted, it’s not on a fixed schedule, but I like to aim for the middle of the month and it’s nice to hit it dead on sometimes.

Anyway, I’ve got some random new and updates for you, but I’m probably going to start with a bit of a ramble, if you don’t mind. Just skip to a little more than halfway down if you don’t want to bother with it. I won’t be hurt.

This past Friday morning I got an email reminder that it was Doctor Salem’s Gotcha Day. Which has always felt odd, calling it that, because it’s not the day we found him or adopted him or anything. It’s the day we decided to save his life.

Y’see, when we bought this house back in 2018, we quickly learned it already had a tenant. This massive, over-muscled, very feral black tomcat who had decided the entire back deck/ yard of the house was his territory. And woe onto anyone who trespassed into his territory. Which sounds ha ha funny, I know, but this cat was a monster. He wouldn’t run from us, and he would definitely attack if we got too close. He actually slashed my leg once by sinking his claws through my jeans, leaving big messy holes in both the denim and the leg.

We were determined that he would not become a project. We weren’t going to tame him, or domesticate him, or feed him. Okay, except when our guys had leftovers we’d probably throw out anyway. And once he realized plates had food on them, well, then we had to move fast once we were out the door because he would charge forward and suddenly there you were being too close again!!! Hands and forearms were often slashed at, and more than a few times plates ended up literally dropped or slid quickly toward him to slow him down.

We definitely weren’t going to name him. Absolutely not. Feeding a cat and naming a cat is just admitting it’s your cat, as a friend of ours said. But slowly, despite our best efforts, we started testing names on him. The default for a black cat was Salem, of course, and we both agreed that was way too cliche and boring for him. I suggested Doctor Midnite, based off the comic book character (who’d also just recently appeared on Legends of Tomorrow). And we tried to make that work for a while, but at some point they merged and he became Doctor Salem.

Anyway... one mid-June day during Lockdown (the 12th, as it happens), I went through the morning dance of trying to put out food plates. This involved trying to distract Doctor Salem from the other stray cat we’d started to feed but still putting plates down fast enough to avoid new scars. He kept pacing around, growling, I quickly put the plate down... and that’s when I saw the right side of his neck was ripped wide open. Like, gaping bloody hole big enough for a golf ball to go through and loose, flopping skin. It took me a few seconds to realize what I was seeing and then it hit me that I was looking into Doctor Salem, at tendons and muscles and, yes, I screamed at that point.

He ate some of his food, crawled up into the big chair on the deck, and just sort of collapsed. We spent a few hours trying to figure out what we were going to do. He was still way too feral to pick up, and even wearing gloves we were worried he’d just thrash wildly and injure himself even worse (and he didn’t have much left to injure). And if we somehow got him to the vet in that condition... well, we didn’t see a lot of good outcomes there, either. Eventually, we watered down some cat food—lots of fluid and some nutrients—and I went out and very cautiously slid it onto the chair next to him. And the whole time he just growled and glared at me, daring me to try something now that he was weak and injured. This continued until I backed several feet away, at which point he cautiously lapped up most of the broth and then flopped over on his side again.

We did this little dance for the next few days, at which point, well, it was clear he wasn’t going to die, but we still couldn’t get him to the vet and he still had a huge, bloody hole in his neck. Sooooooo... we got some broad antibiotics. Started dosing him every morning. And that went on for about, oh... fourteen months? Fifteen? The hole in his neck slowly healed, leaving him with a huge, badass scar. Over this time period I was slooooooowly upgraded from “annoying food service” to “occasionally semi-adequate heat source.” And one morning I got a grudging headbutt of acceptance. We even (eventually) got him to the vet a few times, where he got a surprising bill of health for a cat who’d, well, gone through hell a few times.

We ended up getting him assorted beds for the deck. He would tolerate being lifted onto a lap (but never for more than ten minutes or so). We tried letting him in several times, but he was very suspicious of all these other cats and very annoyed there didn’t seem to be anywhere to go to the bathroom (no matter how many times I showed the box to him). He did spend several long stretches inside, though, five or six hours at a time, and it was amazing to watch him slowly come to realize there was... well, nothing to worry about inside. No rain or cold or anything. He could curl up and truly relax, sleeping without being vigilant. He could eat as much as he wanted.

If only it had a bathroom so he could stay longer.

Anyway...

Doctor Salem’s health took a huge downturn in February. Things had been a bit rough for about a year at that point. He was, by our best guesstimate, at least twelve, and very possibly much older. The vet had him on a variety of drugs which I mixed into various treats for him every morning... but results were mixed at best. He’d survived so much, bounced back so many times, that we half told ourselves he’d do it again. But we could also tell... this time he wouldn’t. He had a quiet last day, flopped against me while I read out on the deck, and then quietly slipped away on his own terms that night—determined until the very end not to be one of those foolish “domestic” cats. We never saw him again, but we also knew at that point the odds of him surviving another night were were almost zero. Like so many amazing figures throughout history, his passing was marked by an eclipse.

And then we had two weeks of stress, half hoping he’d show back up, half sick with worry about what we’d almost certainly need to do if he did. We searched for him. We felt guilty about things we maybe should’ve done, one way or another. And when those weeks were done, we had a week of just straight mourning and acceptance, realizing that the cat we absolutely were not going to name had left us forever and broken our hearts.

So anyway... yeah, that email reminder hit pretty hard.

Anyway... after that wonderful downer I’ve needed to get off my chest, let me tell you some fun things.

I’m almost done with the second draft of ATCS. I told my editor he’d have it before San Diego Comic Con, and I want to stick to that. It’s a much stronger draft, a lot of things have lined up really well (with a bit of nudging), and I think the creepy factor has gone up ten or twenty points on the creepometer. The real question is if any of my usual beta readers are going to get to see it before I turn it in. I’m guessing they will not, because (dramatic pause)...

Last week I got my copyedits back on The Off Season. Essentially someone who’s much better at grammar than me has gone through the whole book. Depending, they may have also caught continuity errors and even fact checked things. Either way, what it means is now I have to go through the whole book line by line, noting every change they’ve made and seeing if it’s something I agree with or not. Usually I do, but sometimes... look, I know this isn’t correct, technically, but there’s a reason I did it like that. That’ll probably take about a week.

I also got to peek at some early layouts. How the section and chapter breaks are going to look. A few formatting things. I think you’re going to like it.

And hey, have I mentioned lately that you can preorder The Off Season right now, at your favorite local bookery? They’d probably love to hear from you. Stop by, browse, pick something up and maybe add on a preorder while you’re at the register.

In somewhat related news, I’m going to be at San Diego Comic Con again this year. Confirmed. I don’t think they’ve announced an official schedule yet, but for now I’ll say you’ll probably have a better chance of seeing/ bumping into me Wednesday-Thursday-Friday than over the weekend proper. Should have definitive times and places for you next time.

What other things can I tell you about...?

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching
We’ve gone out to a bunch of fun, popcorn, summer movies. Two of them at an actual drive in. I thought The Mandalorian and Grogu felt like a big episode of the show, and I was fine with that. Mortal Kombat II was just what I wanted it to be (Baraka!). I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Masters of the Universe (heck, even my beloved really enjoyed it). Seeing some of the reviews and backlash it’s getting, I’m wondering if maybe it’s because I’m not really a huge MotU fan? Who knows. People are weird. We’re also still really enjoying From and Widow’s Bay (season finale tomorrow night as I write this!!!). Also, this may be kind of odd, but... there’s a YouTube Channel, Robo Don’t Know, where the host (Robo!) generally talks about toys, but as of late he’s also been doing these wonderful page-throughs of old issues of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. If you’re a certain person of a certain age... you might enjoy them a lot.

Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
Got to read a very cool... wow, I guess you’d call it a dark urban fantasy? Rise From These Dark Waters by Megan M. Davies-Ostrom, out in October. It’s an interesting take on a zombie apocalypse in a world where (very simply put) elves had reappeared. It deals a lot with politics and survivors guilt and survival, but not in the grim and gritty ways zombie stories tend to go in. Also read Dungeon Crawl at the Haunted Mall, which is an actual-for-real Choose Your Own Adventure book by Jendia Gammon. And holy crap, just the font takes you back. That was a ton of fun. And I’m currently about a hundred pages into Year of the Mer by L.D.Lewiss, with It Was Her House First (Cherie Priest) and The Hab (Josh Dysart, David Lapham, Bill Sienkiewicz) on deck.

Cool New Toys
My birthday came and went. I am old now, and I have put away my childish things. Mostly, to make space for new childish things. My beloved gave me The Emperor, another Super 7 Micronauts figure, this one a sort of blink-and-you-missed-him character from the original toyline (who I had back then, yes). She also gave me the new LEGO Back to the Future DeLorean, and my friends gave me the Spider-Man train set from Sam Raimi’s second Spider-Man movie.

And I believe... that’s everything. For now, anyway. Many thanks to all of you for subscribing and reading. It means a lot to me. Which is why I will talk with you all again next time.