State of the writer (ouch!)

 

Several readers have asked lately when I'm going to publish more books.  Following my mention last Saturday of being in a lot of pain and awaiting surgery, those questions have increased.  I figured I owe my fans (thank you for being there!) an explanation.  If it's TMI, I apologize, but it won't make sense without a certain amount of detail.  (This isn't a pity party, and I'm not looking for sympathy:  I'm just laying out the facts so readers can understand why I haven't produced much lately.)

Basically, what I'm enduring at the moment (and have been for the past couple of years) is a coming together of hard wear and tear over many years, plus injury.  As regular readers will know, I had a fairly adventurous life in Africa before coming to the USA almost thirty years ago.  That put a lot of strain on the moving parts, so to speak:  as so many military veterans are known to say, "It's not the years, it's the mileage".  That's very true.  I was "rode hard and put away wet" for a while, and sooner or later that catches up with one.

The other is my injury on the job two decades ago.  That left me with a fused spine and nerve damage to my left leg and hip, and I've been in constant pain (as in 24/7/365) from then onward.  That just plain wears on a man, I'm here to tell you.

Put those factors together and the wear and tear accelerates.  In 2009 I had a major heart attack, leading to a quadruple bypass.  There was no warning that anything was wrong:  it just hit me out of nowhere.  The theory is that all that stress when I was younger had built up in me, and was intensified by the constant pain following my injury in 2004.  Eventually things just came to a head - or, rather, a heart.  Bypass surgery was successful, and I carried on with my life, now popping pills for heart health as well as for pain and what have you.

The cardiologist in 2009 told me that bypasses were "warrantied" for no longer than ten years:  and, sure enough, ten years and one month after my first heart attack, I had another.  This one was smaller, but was a "widowmaker" - a very dangerous one.  My cardiologist here in Texas was able to unblock an artery that had been bypassed ten years before, and inserted a stent, which put me back on my feet with minimal long-term heart damage (for which, thanks be to God).  That was five years ago.  Is there another one on the way five years from now?  Sooner?  Later?  Who knows?  All I know is, according to the doctors, once you've had two you're almost guaranteed at least a third.

All that accumulated pain and stress has led to other systems in my body beginning to break down, slowly but surely.  I lost my gall bladder some years ago, and am now experiencing kidney problems.  I expect at least one surgery to deal with that, fairly soon now.  Adding to that, the neurosurgeon who fused my spine warned me, twenty years ago, that I was at high risk for reinjury, and was certain to face spinal deterioration because a fusion reduces flexibility, causing discs above and below the fusion site to atrophy, creating conditions where arthritis of the spine can develop.  As he predicted, that has now happened.  Unfortunately, Workers Compensation doesn't want to pay for further treatment for a 20-year-old injury;  but regular medical insurance won't touch it because they regard it as work-related.  That bureaucratic impasse is rather frustrating, to put it mildly.  I may have to launch a fundraiser to pay for the spine surgery.  We'll see.

To make matters more interesting, along came COVID-19.  I've had at least two, and probably three bouts with it.  Thanks to Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, I was able to shake them off, but the after-effects linger, as many of you have experienced for yourselves.

So, for the past couple of years, I've faced an accumulation of health problems and increased pain levels that have effectively stopped me producing nearly as much work as I'd like (particularly of what I consider an acceptable quality).  However, I am still working, even though I find it hard in my present state of health to produce creative writing that I consider of a suitable standard for publication.  I discard a lot of work while editing it, because it's just not up to the standards I try to meet.  In an effort to counter that, I put a lot of effort into making this blog relevant, interesting and entertaining, in an attempt to force myself to remain in the "writing groove".

My plans right now are to complete my Civil War naval trilogy, which is making good progress at last.  I plan to release it in rapid succession, one book a month over three months, hopefully kicking off in 2025.  I also have the sixth volume of the Maxwell Saga almost ready to publish.  I hope that will happen later this year (although that depends on surgeries and their aftermath - that may push it out to 2025 as well).  I'm very sorry for the delay (not least because I rely on income from my books to survive!), but I'm doing my best.  I hope you understand.

So, there you have the state of the author.  I'll keep on plugging away, and I truly hope I can get through and past my current health problems to where I can produce more work, more often.  Prayers, as always, are appreciated.

Peter