Update
By: Mike July 1, 2009
Books
Hunting Ground is completely done, and should be a great read in a few short months. Patty's been spending a little time catching up with interviews, book reviews, and similar things that tend to pile up while she's writing frantically. She's just starting work on Silver Borne, the next Mercy Thompson novel. For the past week or so we've been pretty busy trying to get our taxes figured out. Let me assure you that when you have odd bits of foreign money, as well as multiple contracts with various people, that taxes are no longer the simple affair they're supposed to be. Sigh.
Comic Books
There's been quite a bit of progress on the comic book front lately. The Dabel brothers are cooking right along, and new pages come out every other day or so. The art work is phenomenal, and David Lawrence is doing a wonderful job of working with Patty to make a successful adaptation (which involves some serious creativity on his part!). Actually, here's an interview with Dave where he talks about working on the comics with Patty. The first four of the Mercy Thompson comics will soon be available in an omnibus edition, and I have permission to show some of the artwork here.
Life on the Farm
So we bought this little piece of land in Washington. The location is nice, and Patty has her horses. Lots of horses. However, we're desperately short of proper facilities. There's one pasture of about four acres, fenced in with a very disreputable looking excuse for a fence. It's got a sad and sagging shelter for the horses on one end, and no irrigation at all. Thank goodness we raise Arabians, which are a tough desert breed, because pampered pasture pets might just die out of spite.
This summer I was supposed to go get some water on the land. We thought we'd make it look a little less desolate, and maybe even grow some hay. After some creative juggling of the books, we even allocated a reasonable budget for the project. However, first Patty wanted a real fence to keep her horses in. "No problem", says I, with a bit of bravado. I picked up my trusty fence-post pounder, post hole digger, and a shovel, and went to work.
Three days later, I'd placed four fence posts. I was exhausted, sunburned, and my shoulders were so torn up I couldn't hardly raise my arms. There's about eight to ten inches of powder-fine dirt that's blown onto this land over the years, but below that it's a lava field with basalt shelves and the occasional glacial deposit. I'm beginning to understand why the previous owner's fences were sub-standard. In case anyone was wondering, basalt is a very hard rock.
Declaring defeat, I began looking for some serious machinery to help set the hundreds of posts needed. I purchased the biggest, meanest fence-post pounder I could get my hands on, wincing at the damage it did to my budget. Lots of glowing reviews stated that it could drive posts into virtually any terrain. It looked perfect, weighed a ton (literally), and drives posts perfectly . . . as long as the ground isn't too hard. Actually, it's pretty impressive. If there's just dirt, or even broken rock and rubble, it works like a charm. However, on solid basalt it fails. Miserably.
After much more financial juggling, we abandoned the majority of the irrigation project, and dedicated our remaining funds to buy a used backhoe. It's fun to drive, but even a backhoe won't make a dent in our "soil". This was getting ridiculous!
We finally abandoned all hope of getting any water on the land, and decided that living on Raman noodles and bologna sandwiches would remind us of our long-past university years. We bought a huge hydraulic hammer that fits on the backhoe. It's slow and noisy work, but we finally have the ability to actually dig a $*$@!! post hole where we want it. Now, if only I had some money left for fence posts! At this rate, I'll have fences up in four or five years, and then we can take another look at putting water on this place.
