Did a scary thing this morning. As I was waking up, I thought about my grandmother. I haven't talked to her in almost a decade, never tried to call and she never called me. There was some bad blood between her and my mother which I... just never tried to break. But, as I was thinking about it, I decided to call her.

One thing can be said about talking to family after ten years. There was so much pain in her voice, my mother really hurt her and she hoped that some day, my mother would forgive her for what she did to her. No details, but it was still sad to listen to. She also pressed me for my religious status, the church is very important to her and the fact that I am "religious without church" kind of bothered her almost as much as changing my last name to Moonfire.

We talked for almost an hour, about little things, but it was more of a "here we are, what happens next" type of conversation. I got confirmation about some of my mother's lies (important if I ever write My Mother's Lies) and also learned a bit about my mother when she was a child. It was... actually nice hearing about the influences of my mother's life, which in turn was an influence for my own.

There was also a rawness in the conversation that I wish I could have bottled. If I could pull that on demand, I would be a great writer. :) Related to that, I found a set of articles by mistborn about the 10 rules of writing (or something like that). They were a great read, but after going through them, I kind of felt like I needed to go back five years and do it "right" this time. So many mistakes in my writing.

Other than that and a 49th birthday party for a friend, I just worked on Wind, Bear, and Moon. Found out I really had 44 chapters, not 34 that I remembered. Got up to chapter 9 but I split 9 into two parts. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how this is going now, though 15 might be a tad ambitious for one weekend.

» Wind, Bear, and Moon Rewrite: 0.2045 (9 / 44 chapters)
» Summer Biking: 0.104 (41.6 / 400 km)