Between the Hammer & the Anvil

When illness and life get in the way:

Over the past months Stuart and I have been working on the final copy edit, but I haven’t been getting much work done.

There have been a number of distractions in my personal life, but they have not kept me from working. The truth is that depression, anxiety and pain have kept me from progressing on the book work.

Since my depression and anxiety began to grow worse I have been working on figuring out what is driving this increase in emotional problems. Part of it has been the economy and how it’s affecting our household, part of it is worry over what cuts might be made to HIV care in my county, and part of it has to do with an increase in pain from the nerve injury in my lower back.

I have been given new medication to help with the depression and anxiety, and I’m currently working with my therapist to help with the non-medical side of the equation. In addition, I’ve been giving a lot of thought into what exactly is driving these intensified emotions.

The nerve pain in my lower back is getting worse. This likely means an increase in my pain medication. If it weren’t for the opiates, the trans-dermal Lidocaine patches, and medical marijuana – I would be in agony. All three acting in concert have helped bring the pain back under control, but I’ve been forced to boost the opiates to truly tame the pain.

This means I’m going to have another conversation with my primary care physician, and probably my pain specialist as well. I know they can control my pain and that there are still options out there, but at what cost? Will I become so medicated that I cannot work? Is there a surgical option out there that might fix this problem for good? These are answers that require the employment of a specialist and a number of very expensive tests.

I’ve realized that I have to deal with these problems before I can recommit myself to the final copy edit. I’m going to encourage Stuart to keep working on the edit from his end, so there will be plenty of work waiting for me once my personal problems are resolved.

I don’t like admitting this to myself or to my friends and potential readers. It makes me feel like I’m failing not only myself, but all those who have believed in me and supported me with their kindness and encouragement. I’m grateful beyond measure to all of you, but especially to the love of my life, my partner, Erik.

I am dealing with the emotional right now, and soon I will be dealing with the medical side. Once these problems have stabilized and/or been resolved, I will be able to recommit myself to finishing book one, releasing it, and pushing forward on the rough manuscript of book two, (which is mostly written.)

It may take more time than I thought, but I am determined to have these books see the light of day. I just have to make my personal health a priority right now.

I do want to finish this missive by thanking my friends, my family, my brilliant editor Mr. Stuart Tanner, my equally brilliant artist Mr. Charles Hale, and my Erik; for your encouragement, your friendship, your love, your hard work, and most of all, your patience.

I look forward to getting back on track once I have resolved these personal problems, and I look forward to the day when “Between The Hammer And The Anvil” becomes a reality.

May the universe protect you, watch over you, and guide you in these difficult days to come for all Americans.

Phillip T. Alden – November 06, 2008

Hello out there to all my friends. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are starting to see the beginnings of spring, as I am here in the Bay Area.

I thought it was time for another update, so here goes:

I didn’t get any book work done during the holidays, which I anticipated. Then Erik and I went on our yearly vacation. This time it was Argentina and Chili. We saw a tropical glacier in Argentina, and spent time camping in a national park in Chili. Then we boarded a wonderful ship to sail to Cape Horn and Avenue of the Glaciers. We had a wonderful time and you can see pictures of our trip on my personal web site.

Right after we got home I came down with a nasty bug called a Norovirus. It took me over a month to fully recover.
But I’m all better now. Stuart and I are back at work at the copy edit. There’s still a fair amount of work to be done, but we’re on Section 13, (out of 16.) Once that’s completed Stuart will do another read of the corrected chapters, and we’ll fine tune the text. After that we should be ready to send the manuscript to the publisher.

I will update again once we are done with this step and ready for the next step in the process. It’s taken a long time for this book to see the light of day, but this is my first novel and I’m willing to take as much time as needed to make sure the finished product is as good as we can make it.

In the meantime, I thank you for your patience.

As I reach the end of another calendar year I find myself looking back over the year and evaluating it. Mostly it was a good year. A couple of bad things happened but we survived them and life goes on. Nobody died this year, which is a good thing.

I did not accomplish as much as I had hoped this past year, and I’m hoping next year will be more productive. I got a lot of work done but I have not completed my most important project – the release of my first novel. Stuart and I have done a lot of the final corrections but we’re not done yet.

I’m not going to blame any of it on Stuart as I’ve been just as distracted as he has. I developed more productive work habits, but then everything went by the wayside when the holidays hit. I always know that will happen the closer we get to Thanksgiving, so I’ve learned not to fight it, to accept this time of year as busy and distracting. Come January 02, 2008 and it will be right back to work.

Most of my friends have had a hard year by all accounts, and I’ve worried about them from time to time. I fear their hard times have not ended with the holidays or the changing of the calendar, though I continue to hold them in my meditations and prayers, and I continue to “hold them in the Light,” (as the Quakers say.)

I’ve always liked that expression and the action behind it; to “hold someone in the Light.” Great spiritual ideas can come from many different places.

So I hope and pray that 2008 will be a better year for all my friends and family.

The greater world has also had a hard year. Between the two disastrous wars our country is engaged in, the bust in the housing market, and a lot of chickens starting to come home to roost – the United States is not in its usual “cat-bird seat.” Our short-on-brains President let his greedy little buddies run rampant and they’ve made a much bigger mess of things. (All those brilliant bloggers we like to read have covered Le Grande Spectacle.)

There have also been a number of books released this past year that give us a truer picture of what’s going on than our mass media, which I largely ignore. I’ve learned to just not pay attention to their blather, as well as my decision last year to divorce myself from the American mass media. My decision months ago to stop watching TV was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and I plan to keep ignoring the mass media as we enter 2008.

I learn a lot more from reading good books anyway, and NetFlix keeps movies and shows coming to my mailbox so I’m hardly starved for entertainment. My TV is basically a monitor for my DVD player.

Like most of us I’m going to have a lot of work to do once the holidays are over, which is (partly) why I’m really looking forward to our trip to Argentina and Peru in the last half of December. This is the time of year Erik and I go an explore a new corner of the world. We’ve seen so many great places and we’ve hardly scratched the surface.

It’s a marvelous and wondrous planet, and we’ve met so many great people and seen things I used to dream of seeing; New Zealand, the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian Outback, Hawaii, Alaska, Mexico. The list (and the memories) grow with every trip.

But the nicest part has been sharing these experiences with someone I love. It’s so much more fun when you can share the experience with someone else. Erik and I treasure the adventures we share.

Our country has been going through a very dark time, and I’m hoping we are starting to see some light at the end of that tunnel. But the men in power have done a lot of damage, and they’re going to try and slink away and leave us to clean up their mess. I sincerely hope we don’t let them.

But for our country to come through this, and for all of us to come through this, we have to put aside our apathy and deal with our democracy, and that may be the hardest thing of all.

(cross-posted to my public website.)

There have been some authors who are basically anti-social. They live alone in sparsely populated areas or on properties that discourage visitors. Some of them get a lot of work done.

While I’ve thought about how quiet and distraction-free it would be to live somewhere on the South Island of New Zealand, the truth is I’m a social animal and a born city boy. I get lonely when Erik travels for business. I love my family and friends, and though I would move to New Zealand if the opportunity arose, Erik and I would probably live around the city of Auckland. (Erik is also a city boy, if only by the nature of his work.)

So sometimes, especially at American holiday times, my work flow gets interrupted by family and friends, and by holiday travel. (December is usually when Erik and I take our vacation.) So as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday I find myself with a house full of family, and next week we travel down to Florida to spend the holiday with my in-laws.

The funny thing is, last time I was at my in-laws I got a lot of work done. Don’t ask me how it works.

But the holidays always slow down my book work. I’ve learned to accept this.

The other thing, and I knew this would happen, is that the process slows down as soon as you’re working with someone else, (editors, proof-readers, etc…) There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s just the nature of the business.

So I expect to get little work done before January, then it will be mostly work.

(It took two sessions and 5-7 days just to get this post done.)

By Phillip T. Alden – San Mateo Daily Journal
For publication: November 13, 2007

I work out three times a week, and I have a fairly active lifestyle for a writer and journalist.  But I’m also 44 years-old and I have a chronic back injury.  That has forced me to learn balance in my workout routine.  No longer can I push the weight stack or cycle on that elliptical until the sweat is pouring off my body.

But that’s normal, (more or less.)  As we age it becomes harder and harder to workout at the same level as we did in our 20’s.  “Surrender gracefully the things of youth.”  But we live in a youth-obsessed society where many of us try to look (and act) younger than we are.  There’s nothing wrong with being young at heart, but our hearts are not as young as they once were.  Do you ever wonder why professional athletes retire in their 40s?  The obvious answer is that their bodies cannot handle the physical punishment that professional sports puts upon them, and they don’t heal as fast as they did when they were younger.

The same is true for the rest of us.  That back injury I mentioned happened at the gym.  And my pain specialist told me his practice is “exploding” with people just like me who injure themselves by either over-exercising or exercising improperly.  That’s great for his practice but not so great for those of us who become patients.

So as much as it may pain us, we need to admit that we’re not as young as we used to be, and that’s okay.  We can still have an active lifestyle and a healthy body.  In fact, as we age exercise becomes more important.  Being older does not mean we become couch potatoes, but it does mean:

·  Our muscles shrink and lose mass.
·  Joint tendons lose water and become less flexible.
·  The heart pumps blood more slowly.
·  Bones become less dense and more breakable.
·  Cartilage starts to break down and joints become more easily inflamed.

But all is not lost.  Much of these processes can be delayed with regular exercise, however we need to exercise smart, using some of that accumulated wisdom that comes with age.  Here are some basics:

·  Check with your doctor before you begin a new exercise program, including getting a complete physical that includes heart function.

·  Start slowly.  Many injuries are caused by overdoing it on the first day.

·  Be consistent.  Staying in shape takes dedication and commitment to a regular exercise program.

·  Don’t push yourself past your body’s natural limits.

·  Abandon “No pain.  No gain.”  Pain is for those who wish to end up hurt.  Smart people know that pain is a warning signal.

·  Try different things.  Doing the same exercise over and over is not only boring, it may also put too much strain on a particular muscle group.

·  Pick an exercise/sport that’s right for your lifestyle and body type.

·  Don’t try to keep up with your 20 year-old friend.  Exercise with people who are in your age group and body type.

·  Take a walk.  The dog needs exercise too.

Above all, just use your common sense.  If you work with a personal trainer choose one who respects your limits and your age.  By just following a few simple rules you can stay in shape, look and feel great, and enjoy all the benefits a sensible exercise program offers.  If a certain exercise or machine doesn’t feel right for you, try something else.  There are many ways to stay in shape out there.  Look for the ones that suit you best.

Yesterday I researched, wrote, edited and sent my article for next week to my editor - right after dinner.

Tonight I edited a section from my final copy editor that included two requests to expound on the narrative, add some action and description (color and background) to the text - right after dinner.

Tomorrow I’m visiting my brother in Sacramento so I’ll have to take the day off for that, but unless we have some social function I’m unaware of, I’ll be right into work - right after dinner - on Saturday and Sunday.

Verdict: The new work habit system seems to work well, but as the holidays come ever closer I’m going to have a fair number of nights where socializing will cut into work. That’s okay because that’s the best part of the winter holidays for me - spending time with family and friends over good food and wine. But to augment those nights, it will still be good to take any daytime opportunity that presents itself to get some work done.

Once we return from the southern tip of the South American continent (Cape Horn - Argentina and Peru) on the 31st, and the holidays end and turn into just winter, the new work schedule should go well, barring any unforeseen events. As much as I want to finish I don’t think I’ll have all of Stuart’s corrections completed before we leave in December. I don’t even have all the sections from Stuart yet. (These are long and complicated chapters at the end of the book, and it takes a while to edit all that text.)

You always have to give your editor some breathing space so he can feel comfortable and do the job well, in Stuart’s case, brilliantly. I feel very fortunate to have him as my final copy editor. I couldn’t ask for better.

(Cross-posted to my Public Blog and my Book One website.)

For those few of you who actually read my public blog or the blog attached to the homepage for my book, I appreciate your patience and your dedication.

This book has taken longer than I anticipated, even for a first time out, but I’ve learned to be okay with that.  I’m still working on the final copy edit, though we are most of the way through.  After I do the corrections Stuart and I will have to go over the manuscript to make sure all the corrections fit and everything is still in place.

He just sent me Section 13-01 with a bunch of corrections and the final section is 16-09 or 16-10.  I’m unsure because we’ve added a scene or two and that changes the numbering, but it gives you an idea of our progress to date.

I would say the time frame has changed because I’m now working with other people, but the truth is both Stuart and I had other things in our lives that needed taking care of.  But with the arrival in my mailbox of the Harry and David catalog, we realized the winter holiday insanity is imminent, and we decided to focus on book work to help us avoid the insanity as much as possible.

I’m a Taoist and I don’t know what Stuart’s current affiliation is, but neither of us were ever big on the whole Christmas thing.  I love that, for the second half of December, Erik and I are going to be on a boat off the coast of Peru and Argentina.  Christianity is big down in South America but I’m still hoping the holiday stuff will be kept to a minimum.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love spending time with friends and family, and I love eating good food.  It’s just everything else I could do without.  I’m especially glad I don’t watch television during this time of year, (with the exception of a couple of downloaded shows from Apple TV, and those are commercial-free anyway.)  The main thing I use our living room monitor for is watching a DVD every now and again.

The few good shows that are on get released on DVD and I don’t care about watching them the moment they’re first shown.  I can wait for the DVD release, which I’ve noticed keeps happening faster and faster.  I’d rather read, write, post to my online community, play my drums or walk my dog.

To me most television shows are a waste of time, and if even the few I really like disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings very much.  From an artistic standpoint I think television is nearly dead medium.  The few good shows that are on are surrounded by a cacophony of fear-inducing corporate news, useless blather about questionable celebrities, and mass consumption.  As I said, a nearly dead artistic medium.

After I post this update I’m going to return to my corrections.  Next update in about a month.  Thanks for hanging in there.  “Between the Hammer and the Anvil” will see the light of day.  I promise that.

I know many of my friends and family members have been anxiously awaiting the release of “Between The Hammer and the Anvil.”  And I have wanted to release the first book for a while now myself.

But the final copy edit process has taken longer than I originally thought.  It’s nobody’s fault, really, just the way things run sometimes.

I promise that we are hard at work on the final copy edit, and I will release the book as soon as it’s ready.  I trust my final copy editor and we’re having lunch today to discuss things.

I appreciate your patience and forbearance.  I will try to do monthly progress updates from now until the final manuscript leaves my hands and goes to the publisher.

Thanks again for your patience with me.  I just want the book to be the best it can be when it’s released.  This is my first novel and it’s important to me to get it right.

the book is coming along at its pace instead of mine. Stuart is dutifully sending me the final corrections and I correct a block of them once I have enough. I have enough right now for a work session, but I’ve been having a difficult week. I somehow strained something in or around my left knee. I’m hoping to get some work done at the end of this weekend or early next week.

We’re very close to the final sections of the book and the corrections have been minor to this point. I’m not falling behind in the work as long as Stuart still has sections to correct. Usually one work session catches me up to Stu. He’s a demon with the English language and I could not have asked for a better Final Copy Editor.

Once we’ve done a final read-through and check, the manuscript should be ready to go to the publisher. When I have a release date I’m going to be telling everyone, believe me.

I apologize for not keeping up with this journal. I have three at the moment; one that’s personal, a public blog located at:

http://phillipalden.blogspot.com/

and this one.

I’ve also been busy writing articles, which you can find posted on my “public” blog.

But back to book news:

Charlie has finished the cover for book one, but we’re saving the final image for unveiling when the novel is released.

The current hold-up is my final copy editor. He’s been going through some personal stuff, and his father is getting on in years and experiencing all that comes with old age, so we just have to be a little patient. I’m spending this weekend with him in the wine country so I’m sure we’ll talk about getting back on track.

I do plan to release this novel this year.

In other news:

Book Two is pretty much written, except for tying up the end of the narrative, and deciding upon a final title. I decided months ago that the current title is a “working title,” and I’m going to let the narrative determine the final title.

And I finally conceived of the end of Book Three! It came to me at a birthday party for a friend held at a local Cajun restaurant. I was sitting alone and nursing my Hurricane, (a marvelous alcoholic concoction,) and I was doing what most writers do in idle moments, thinking about writing. There are some people who think that, a person sitting alone must need company, and that’s a very wonderful and human thing. But writers often love sitting by themselves, even at a party or similar event. Just observing others interact allows us to think about writing.

But I digress. I’m not going to tell you what Book Three is about for obvious reasons, but when it came to me it was like a bolt out of the blue. I had been contemplating the end of the trilogy for months and it just struck me that night.

So after we get Book One released and I’m selling like mad, I’ll edit and change the rough draft of Book Two into final manuscript form. I’ll probably start writing Book Three at the same time. More on that as things progress.

To be honest, I’ve enjoyed this little break from the art. I need to do some research on publication and marketing for Book One, (all options are up in the air at the moment.) I’ve also been writing my weekly public health column, though that takes very little time really, and dealing with some family issues of my own.

I hope all my friends out there, (including the ones I’ve yet to meet,) are having a good summer, and I promise to be better about updating this blog more often. By next week we’ll probably be finishing up the final sections of Book One and getting it ready for release.

I’ll try to talk about people like Robert Jordan and J.K. Rowling and Philip K. Dick, authors who inspire and influence my work.

Currently Reading: “The Red Badge Of Courage” by Stephen Crane.