Last night stretched on longer than I wanted it to. Acid reflux kept me up, staring at the ceiling while the clock did that slow, mocking crawl. Whiskey Kitty could not quite grasp why her human was not springing into action for playtime. In her mind, midnight is always a reasonable hour to chase imaginary enemies. In my body, it was very much not.
I finally crawled out of bed around noon, feeling like I had been lightly toasted and then put back in the box. Mom and I headed to storage to pull some artwork for the January show. Success on the art front. Total amnesia on the book front. We forgot them entirely. Still, there is time, and time is something I am learning not to panic about.
After that, I went to my favorite coffeehouse and got to work on another series of books. This one leans unapologetically into romance and sexuality. You would think talking a little dirty might turn people off, but oddly enough, it does not. A large portion of my readers are women, and they seem to enjoy these stories quite a bit. A therapist once told me that men tend to consume romance visually, while women prefer to read it. My strange love stories and awkward romantic encounters apparently fit right into that theory.
One thing that keeps popping up in these stories is smoking, used as a kind of flirtatious social glue. That old image of a cigarette passed between fingers, a pause, a look, a moment. I am grateful that part of my real life is over. I do not need nicotine as a conversational crutch anymore. Romance, though, is another matter entirely. That may still get its chapters.
Despite the late night, the reflux, the missed books, and the tangled memories of old habits, I am still here, still working, still not smoking. The art is moving forward, the writing is alive, and the cravings did not win.
I got this.
by Dan and Bonkers
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