Gave blood at work today. It went pretty easily for me, as it generally does. I told the technician that bleeding well is one of my gifts.

But one of the students, across the aisle in the Bloodmobile, apparently had a harder time. From what I could gather, they failed to get a good puncture, tried more than once, and eventually gave up rather than turn his inner arm into hamburger. I heard his technician tell mine, after the student had left, that it was the second one he’d messed up that day.

I didn’t like the sound of that.

Last night, I went back to my fiction writing. I’ve been busy getting my taxes ready recently, plus the desultory promotion I’ve been doing for Troll Valley. But I have the feeling Troll Valley‘s surge (such as it was) has passed. Haven’t seen reviews from several of the bloggers who got free copies, but I have to assume they’re doing what I do when I get a freebie that disappoints me—exercising merciful silence.

So I’ve taken up revising the next manuscript I’ll send to Ori for e-publication. This one’s called Hailstone Mountain. It’s another Erling Skjalgsson book, but this time in the H. Rider Haggard vein, with a lost world and horrible eldritch mysteries. I think it’ll be a fun story, though it has tragic elements.

Getting back on it seems to have raised my spirits a little. Life, as someone said, is love and work, which in my case means just work. Without discounting the importance of my career at the Bible school/seminary, I’ve always felt (while fully aware that people are often deluded about such things) that my true calling in life is my novels. Especially the Erling books. I’m getting to the age where I have to buckle down and finish the saga, if I want to be sure to get it completed. We old bachelors don’t tend to be long lived. I often think of President Grant, sitting on a cold porch at his New York house, finishing his Memoirs before the cancer took him (It’s a great book, by the way. You should read it).

After Hailstone Mountain, there’s one further completed manuscript to be worked up, Death’s Doors, a sort of a sequel to Wolf Time. Then, according to my plan, I need to concentrate on Erling Skjalgsson. Two or possibly three books about his conflict with (Saint) Olaf Haraldsson, the road to violent death which makes a saga a saga.

It ought to be do-able. Life is full of surprises, though. We do what we can, with the material we’re given. Inventory data currently unavailable.