Full Frontal with Clete Barrett Smith at Village Books in Bellingham.

I officially released All Is Silence February 18th, 2014, so it is nearing its fourth book-birthday and about eighteen months from my fictional apocaloptimistic future pandemic. It’s been a lot of up and down recently. All of them have silver linings, but sometimes it’s just a sliver.

The high school I have taught at for the last eight years, on the site where I have taught for ten years, will be closing at the end of this school year. This has been a high probability for the last year due to falling enrollment. I don’t yet know where I will be teaching, though at least I know I have a job somewhere.

My daughter, her husband and my two lovely grandaughters, ages 4 and 5 months, moved into my house to build a stake to buy their own place instead of renting. It’s really amazing, and I love having them around, but I’m afraid it becomes easy not to focus on the writing.

In addition, my partner and I have sold one house and bought another. In order for that to happen, I’ve done renovations, flooring, met engineers and water guys, cleaned gutters, researched properties…

And that is nothing compared to first staging the house we were selling and then downsizing and moving all the stuff! The house is closer to my work, so I’m driving less, while my partner drives more, it is on a two-acre piece of land with trees, and outbuildings and a creek! And this is the view out the window. This is the house and property where I plan to fail at retirement. Now we have work to do getting the new place safe to occupy, learn about well-water systems with too high a salt content and much more!

So, I am progressing on Book III, but life has intervened in fairly intense ways this past year or so. Thanks for being patient with me. For my birthday, 51 years on the 15th of February, I am blocking out time each morning to make progress on my writing goals. Again, thank you for your support.