It’s been a rough week for news. Since I live in Canada (Southern Ontario, to be a bit more specific), the elephant down south is causing a lot of transfer-stress, in both work and social circles. Times are going to get harder for almost everyone I know, and that’s rarely a good sign.

You remember when things got easier as time went on? Yeah, me neither. I think it was a lie we were told when we were young and dumb.

Dumber. Anyway.

But, what can you do? I suppose I’m grateful that my little books and my art and the stuff I sell across the border is so low stakes that this has minimal direct impact on me. It has huge implications for my ability to ever make a living wage (or anything approaching it), but for now it’s mostly fragmentary stuff about groceries getting more expensive, fuel getting more expensive, and everyone starting to point fingers (usually at the wrong people).

But I can’t do anything about any of that. I’m just a writer, I just make silly stories about big stompy robots and space cowboys. And I’m going to keep doing that, with the hope that the people who read my stories maybe forget for a little while about the worst of the troubles in the world and live in a slightly better, brighter place for a few hours or days.

That’s the hope, at least. I should get back to it… the short story I’m working on right now is probably going to be almost 10K words when I’m done!

Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!