Holiday Book-Shopping Links

Holidays are coming, and the world is still struggling with lockdowns and other COVID precautions. On the business front, these past months have been particularly hard on smaller businesses, like independent bookstores.

If you were thinking of giving one (or more!) of my books as a gift this season, please consider ordering from an indie bookstore. Here are some suggestions. Links go to my stuff, but obviously you can order whatever you like 🙂

As an added incentive, if you’re in the U.S. and will be giving one or more of my books as gifts, let me know and I’ll send you signed bookplates to go with them. (While supplies last.)

I Can High Five Again!

It’s been a little over five weeks since my surgery for Dupuytren’s Contracture on my right hand. The incision has closed and healed, and I’m able to use the pinky again for most day-to-day stuff. I can even give (gentle) high fives!

The tissue underneath is still healing, and that’s going to continue for a while. It’s stiff, swollen, and a little tender. But I’ve been working with the occupational therapist, doing my stretches and exercises and massages at home, and I think overall we’re making progress. The biggest problem is that it’s a bit sensitive and achy, especially at night, which has been making it harder to sleep.

I’ve also been able to get back to exercising again, after a month or so off the weight machine. There are a couple of exercises my hand just won’t do yet, but I can get through most of them. I’m averaging about 10-20 pounds less than I was pre-surgery, which is frustrating, but I’ll get back up eventually.

Right hand, five weeks post-surgery

The lightning bolt scar is coming in nicely. We’re trying to keep that from tightening up and restricting movement, but I do like the whole “I high-fived Thor and all I got was this lousy scar” vibe!

I met with the doctor again today, and we talked about next steps. The ring fingers on both hands have Dupuytren’s nodules that will need to be treated eventually. They’re nowhere near as advanced as I had on my pinky, thankfully. It sounds like both will be treated with injections to weaken the cords, then simply flexing the fingers backward to break them, freeing up the tendons and restoring motion.

I’m not looking forward to that.

But hey, I can once again put my hand in my pocket, don and remove gloves, type with all ten fingers, and much more. Yay, progress!

NaNoWriMo: Rough Start

I figured I’d try doing National Novel Writing Month to get some momentum on my next project. I spent a week or two at the end of October figuring out the characters, doing some preliminary worldbuilding, and getting most of the plot figured out.

The writing was a little slow this week, for some reason, but I’d gotten 3000 or so words done by the time I went to bed yesterday. Then as I was lying there not sleeping, I realized the book might work better if I simplified the central concept.

That meant throwing out a lot of the backstory, as well as everything I’d already written. On the bright side, 3000 words isn’t really that much, and I’m feeling a lot more excited about the new, streamlined idea for the book.

This  isn’t under contract with a publisher yet. I’d been working on a pitch to send to my agent, but that’s gotta be scrapped and redone now. I think I’ll try writing a chapter or two first to get a better feel for the book before I try again to get a pitch we can use to hopefully sell this thing.

I won’t go into detail for now, except to say that it would be a standalone fantasy, and I think most of y’all will be excited about it.

Anyone else attempting NaNo this year? Like anything else, it’s an approach that works for some people but not for others. I’ve had mixed results in the past. And with all the extra stress of this month, I refuse to beat myself up for not being on track with word count.

Surgery and Recovery

It’s been six days since the surgeon opened up my hand to try to restore movement to the pinky. At that point, the Dupuytren’s contracture had progressed to where I only had about 30° of movement. (Click the link for a lovely photo.)

This was causing trouble with things like reaching into a pocket or putting on a glove. It was also messing with my typing. When I finally met with the surgeon, he said I should have come in before it got to this point. Earlier on in the progression, they can do less invasive procedures to help. At this point, there wasn’t much to try except for surgery.

Me in surgical gown and mask, with insulin pump.

The surgeon said things went pretty well. He was able to get the fingers pretty much straight, though they may not stay perfectly straight as they heal. I was bandaged up and put in a splint to try to hold the finger straight as much as possible.

I went back after two days, so he could remove the initial splint and take a look. He also removed the drains, the little plastic straw-like things. This was around the point that I went into shock for a few minutes. Felt like I was going to throw up, broke out in sweat. Fun stuff!

Once I recovered, I got my first real look at the incision and stitches. Just in time for Halloween season. We switched to a remoldable splint that I could take off to do stretches and therapy.

I go in on Wednesday to get half the stitches out. Eventually we will start cutting back on how much I have to wear the splint. I’ll probably have it on for overnight for a while yet, though. Everything seems to be healing fairly well so far. He doesn’t think I’ll get full movement back, but I’m pushing to get as close as possible.

I am able to drive and do most things I need to do, but not everything. I’m doing this blog post on my phone using voice dictation, which is a pain. And I really want to be able to start typing and working on book stuff. I’ve also had to stop most of my exercise routine for now.

Mostly, I’m just bored and frustrated and ready to be doing stuff again. It’s giving me a lot more sympathy for how frustrated Amy used to get when she was recovering from her knee surgeries.

The worst part? I was all ready to tell people I had a lightning bolt scar because I stopped a killing curse with my bare hand. But with everything JK Rowling has been going on about lately, I really don’t feel like doing a lot of Harry Potter references. Any other suggestions for good lightning bolt scar stories?

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