What book are you reading right now?
The Hobbit, American gangster, and other tales of New York, and the Bible. It’s the start of the Lord of the Rings series I’ve wanted to read.
It keeps your mind sharp. I’ve noticed a pattern between people who are smarter and more interesting and those who read.
I just finished Martin Luther by Eric Metaxis.
I always have more than one book going
Delusions of Adequacy 
Oddly, it’s a draft I’ve been working on for over 15 years . . . can’t make it work right.
Crisis point doesn’t pass my “So what?” test, and the ending just ain’t the way it oughta be.
Idea is sound . . . sci-fi based on crude ability to enter and alter the minds of others. Two girls, one dark and one light, discover their ability through an Amerind weirdo, hone it, become adept and successful in manipulating people and events . . . until they run into an older woman (the light girl’s mother-in-law) who also has the power but is unaware of it.
Theme is how power corrupts innocence and then the universe comes along with “not today, you little shit.”
I’ve done around 20 short stories and several novella-length pieces (mostly post-apocalypse, sci-fi, and people mind meddling without a how-to manual). Those were simple, easy-to-finish items of between 30,000 and 60,000 words.
This one is 80K and broken . . . like a small-block 327 engine running on the wrong plugs and bad fuel. I change the plugs, the timing goes off. I set the timing, the valves start chattering. I clean ’em up, the battery gives out.
Then it goes back into archives for another year or so ’til I pull it up and re-read it. Back before word processors, I’d write somethin, set it aside for a few months for some time-distancing to qualify me to edit my own stuff, then re-read it . . . and if I didn’t like it, I’d burn it, page by page, in a big barrel in the back yard. Very therapeutic.
Pro’bly shouldn’a abandoned that routine.
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