Today is the pub day for Ink & Steel. You can read a sneak preview here:

prologue

act I, scene i

act I, scene ii

act I, scene iii

Available at your preferred online retailer or at a fine brick-and-mortar bookseller near you.

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It was 66 and 88% when I left the house and now it is 76 and 76%, 45 minutes later. (Temperatures adjusted for heat stress.) But I still dragged my sorry self out of bed at 6 am (I meant to get up at 5, but the bed won that round) and went for a 2.5 mile run.

I'm pretty durned proud of myself, too, because I ran the first mile and a half without stopping, and the only times I was in discomfort was at the top of the two biggish hills. Other than that, smooth and easy and no respiratory or muscular problems. Then I flopped for a few minutes (Until I could no longer feel my heartbeat), stretched for a few minutes, and ran the last mile home pretty easily. I got tired in the last fifth of a mile, but it was muscular tired, not cardio, and I pushed through it until the last tenth, which I walked to cool down.

I guess it's time to add another half mile to the route. And get up earlier. Gahhhhhhhhh.

95 miles to Lothlorien. 14 miles to the cave troll. Really, could you not just listen to Sean Bean say that all day?

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In other stuff, last night was a good climbing night, though I only did walls I've done before. A 5.5, three 5.6s, and a 5.7. These were not new routes, but I learned things on all of them. And I have improved, which is kind of exciting.

They took down that black route I had just finally finished, and the blue one that has been kicking my ass for ages.

Wednesday, I want to try the pink one on the barrel vault again (My new project wall, because they took my other project walls away), try the new unrated red one they replaced the deadly blue route with, and work on the spearmint-stripe one that I have done several times but cannot do consistently.