Musings & Thoughts for Monday, June 3, 2024, or: How I Spent My Sunday…and What I Plan to Do Today

Late Morning, Monday, June 3, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Madison Summer Almanac

Greetings, folks. It’s another nice early summer day here in my corner of Carroll County, roughly seven miles west of the border with Maine. The temperature is 78°F (25°C) under sunny conditions. With humidity at 33% and the wind blowing from the east-northeast at 3 MPH (5 Km/H), it feels like 86°F (30°C). The forecast for today calls for sunny skies and a high of 84°F (29°C). Tonight, the skies will be mostly clear. The low will be 52°F (11°C).

Weekend Update, Part the Second: How I Spent My Sunday

Yesterday was – as always – a quiet and uneventful Sunday. I didn’t work on Reunion: Coda. I knew I needed to rest for the workweek that began today, and I didn’t want to write anything beyond my daily post for this blog. I was, like it or not, in weekend mode.

So, what did I do during the Lazy, Hazy, Second Day of Summer?

• Played a skirmish in Regiments on medium difficulty
• Listened to classical music on my Amazon Music
• Read a chapter from The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, David Halberstam’s final book before he died in 2007
•   Watched Stalingrad, an episode of the classic 1973-1974 documentary series The World at War
• Watched a few videos – at random times – on YouTube, mostly music-related

On Writing & Storytelling: Action This Day

Today is Monday, so I’m working again. As usual, I’ll have a break once I finish blogging to unwind, eat something, and do some other things before I return to my desk and continue writing my novel, Reunion: Coda.

I know I’ve posted these statistics before, but this is where I am on my writer’s journey that started in March 2023:

• Number of Completed Chapters (Including the Prologue): 16
• Number of Total Chapters (So Far): 17…the current one is 75% complete
• Number of Pages: 386
• Number of Words: 97,143, including those on the title page, epigraph, and a quote by William Shakespeare
  

I plan to start writing Scene Four of That Moment Divine (I prefer giving titles to my chapters instead of numbering them) this afternoon when I return from my break. I want to complete the manuscript by late July or early August, so I will do everything I can to make sure that today is a productive writing day.

Well, folks, send some good vibes my way for my writing adventures. And if you haven’t yet, please think about getting a copy of Reunion: A Story, the novella that brings Jim Garraty (the hero/storyteller of Reunion; Coda) to life in a mix of a growing-up tale and thoughts on friendship, teen drama, and remorse that one reviewer praised as “a lovely lyrical book.”