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I have not died, but I have been very tired. Each year from October 15th through December 7th is the Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) for Medicare Advantage plans. It is the period when people who are not new to Medicare can enroll, disenroll, or switch their plans, and my day job deals with those changes, making this time of year a quite busy one. Usually, the workload doesn’t become large and overtime is not offered until later in the AEP, like early to mid-December.

Not this year.

I do not know if more people are retiring early, losing their jobs, or whatnot, but right from the start of the AEP our work queues grew exponentially quickly. I have been taking advantage of the sudden overtime, working 10 hours a day and half a day on Saturdays.

That is not the only reason my poor blog has been neglected.

I have also entered the revise-and-edit phase of my 80s gay cinephile horror novel Final Reel.

Editing and revising is very different than drafting. Now my brain isn’t trying to conjure something from nothing, but rather shape what is already there to the image and form that now exists in my head. This process for my other novel has been mainly one of fixing sentences and paragraphs with minor plot and story changes. Final Reel wasn’t written with an outline—I made it up as I went along. This produced a manuscript where the back half doesn’t fit with the front because it wasn’t until then that I truly understood what I was crafting. So, editing and revising has a lot more revising this time around.

That said, I am extremely happy with it so far, and I think this may be my best novel yet.

However, this poor blog will continue to be neglected for the next several weeks.