One more picture...

For the lovely people at Rainbow Bridge, who were so kind and caring today. And ready with a box of tissues when they were needed. Thank you.

Ginger

This isn't a typical blog post, but then this isn't a typical subject for me to be writing about.

Ginger, our 14-year old tomcat, was born around Easter 1998. His mother, Shadow, had been a stray that Kate had found some time before, hiding under a lamp post in Houston late one night when she'd been driving back home from Galveston. Shadow had just one litter of kittens, and there was something different about little Ginger that made us keep him.

He's had his adventures over the years.

When he was only a few months old he chased a German Shepherd up the road for daring to encroach on his turf.

One time we saw him slinking into the yard trying to creep up on a bird, then he looked up and saw about fifty birds perched on the fence, all looking at him. He slunk back again, pretty quick.

One evening a few years ago we heard a terrible noise from the garage and when we got in there we found feathers. Ginger was hiding behind a box. A few minutes later I saw one of the biggest owls I've ever seen perched on a power line nearby, and I'm fairly sure I know what happened; that owl had tried to grab Ginger and, thankfully, Ginger had either run for it or fought back, and from the feathers I'm fairly sure there was a fight. (He was no lightweight, by the way - he topped fifteen pounds at one time.)

Over the New Year Ginger stopped eating properly. We had visitors for the holiday and at first I put it down to him simply being out of sorts, not being used to having a house full of people. He'd done similar things in the past, so I didn't worry at first.

When he still hadn't eaten normally for three straight days we knew that it wasn't as simple as that. I took him to the vet and they took some blood. At this point I was thinking that he probably had nothing more than a bug.

It wasn't anything so nice. The vet diagnosed kidney disease, and said it was quite serious. He sent me home with a bag of medications - antibiotics, stuff to encourage his appetite, special food, and said to make an appointment for another blood test.

The second test showed marked improvement but the vet warned me that Ginger's kidneys would never fully recover. He suggested preparing ourselves for the worst. In the meantime, make another blood test appointment.

The third blood tests were done the day before yesterday and the news was bad - he was basically back to square one. I was given the choice of hospitalisation, which would get him feeling better but would give him a few more weeks at most. The other option was the hard one.

It came down to a matter of quality of life. Ginger didn't seem to be in real pain but the poisons in his blood were making him weak, lethargic and no doubt just generally very sick.

Even though it was logically the best choice, emotionally it was still very difficult for us. He's been with us since he was born; apart from a few days here and there when we've done trips away he's been with us every day. It tore our hearts out to have to let him go, but the alternative was for him to suffer more and more.

And so last night we took him to the veterinary hospital a few miles from here and told them that we'd made the decision to spare him any more suffering.

I stroked Ginger while the vet administered the drugs. He was lying across my knees when his heart stopped.

I think I got maybe four hours sleep last night. I feel emotionally drained. I wrote this at least in part to get some of it out of my system, but to be honest I don't think it's helped.

I am never getting another pet. I don't think I can take this kind of pain again.

First post of 2013. And about time.

Oh, dear, this weekly blog really has taken a bit of a tumble, eh? The last post was more than a month ago. To my regular readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers of Penge), my apologies. Gearing up for Christmas was largely to blame but also, as I recall, I was concentrating my efforts on the storyboard for the book I've been working on.

What's happened since that last post: quite a lot, actually. Christmas, of course, for which son #1 came up from Texas to stay for a while, and son #2 and family came down from where they live which is much closer (about half an hour drive from here). A good time was had by all.

Sometime around New Year I noticed that our cat - a 14-year old tomcat named Ginger - was off his food and didn't seem to be as active as usual. Then a little while after that I saw him staggering. I took him to the vet, who found that he was badly dehydrated and that his electrolytes were all over the place. It turns out that he's developed serious kidney disease, and it must have happened quite suddenly. He's been on medications since, which we've been giving him at home, and he seems to be feeling better but he's still not his old self. From what the vets told us his kidneys will probably improve but they'll never recover completely. In the nicest possible way, they told us to prepare for the worst. That's something I don't like to think about.

On the writing front I've been working on my fourth full-length work, which is a SciFi/steampunk story tentatively titled Smoke & Mirrors. I polished the storyboard a few times, then the first actual words were written on New Year's Day. Just one scene, and only 650 words, but a good start. Writing has been going on apace since then, and the 'script is up to 29,000 words. My thumbnail estimate puts the first draft in the neighbourhood of 105,000, which is more than respectable. I'm hoping to have that first draft completed by the end of February.

As for the earlier books, well, I have some news there too.

First, as has been mentioned, I submitted two 'scripts to Harper Voyager last October when they had an open submission period; a week or so ago I got a rejection email for one of them - but they didn't say which one. I've emailed the question, but so far I've had no reply. (They had more than 4,500 submissions, which I think was probably far more than they expected, so I know they must be busy going through them all. I can wait.) No word yet about the other one that I sent in, either. Given that many people expect them to reject 95% of the submissions, at this moment I'm really just waiting as fast as I can.

In November I finished the second draft (or perhaps it was third, or even fourth) of my steampunk action/adventure story Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia, and after talking it over with Kate I decided to submit to another publisher (the original plan had been to wait to see if HV were interested in one or both of the ones I'd sent them, and if so send the new one to them too). I sent the query, and three weeks later I received an email asking for the full manuscript. I was hyped. Last week, big big news: I was offered a contract. I asked a couple of questions to clarify a couple of points, then sent the signed paperwork in just yesterday. I am now very, very hyped indeed. To the point where I've had trouble thinking about anything else.

So while I'm still working on Smoke & Mirrors at the moment, I expect that in the next handful of days I'll be putting that on the back burner while I work with the publisher to knock the rough edges off Gunn & Bohemia and give it a good polishing.

It's Saturday morning; I have about an hour free, so I'm about to grab a coffee and get back to working on Smoke & Mirrors. So I'd better get to it. And going forward I'll be trying hard to get back to a weekly Wednesday/Thursday schedule for doing these blog posts.

Until next week...