Update

Short answer: I had another baby.

Long answer: I don't want to include a page long Author Note on my upcoming work. So I'm doing it here.

Microsoft and I are breaking up. I wrote the rough draft of the sequel to "The Ring and the Bridle" three years ago. (The working title is "The Storm in Spring".) Microsoft after nearly twenty years as a customer has pissed me off enough to switch to Google Docs. It's cheaper, and I'm not dealing with an AI I didn't ask for. (Nevermind the planned obsolence of my seven year old laptop.) This means however I now have a Herculean task of moving all my files and pictures over before I close my account.

"The Storm in Spring" was on the back burner as I wanted to write a book spanning the time between it and "The Ring and the Bridle" as there is a five year gap between them. It looks unlikely I'll have that book done in the next five years and as I don't want to possibly lose the work I do have: up it goes.

And the older I get, the more I realize five years is nothing in the great scheme of things. The characters should be similar to their end points of the first book with hopefully a bit more perspective. I know I need to re-read my own book before starting my second draft.

And it is a VERY rough draft.

Plus it'll hopefully drive interest in my first book, which has also been sitting neglected. The first chapter is up here if you have interest. I do treat book writing as a hobby, just so you know before getting involved with me. It does get shoved back for family and career. And it'll be that way until I retire in...thirty years, if I'm lucky. I'll probably be working part time until I drop dead (again if I'm lucky) because I'm a Millennial.

So I tend to dip in and out, sometimes for years.

Okay look for it in the next few days hopefully.

Also I'm thinking I should just get a tablet. I've always been a "hunt and peck" typer since I was in elementary school and I frustrated my typing teacher by only using my index fingers. I want to avoid Copilot and I can't sit at a desk for hours with my kids.

(While writing this I have one kid excitedly talking about their YouTube cat video while the younger one tells me "Ineedcup!" because the older one has a pediasure shake and what the older has, the younger MUST have. So I am always getting up.)

Anyone use a tablet to write? What do you recommend if you do? I need a budget model. I'm also a teacher.