My writing week 3 (18/19)

Hi all,

My father died just over a week ago, on Mother's day. The previous few weeks he had been unable to communicate and just wanted to wander the corridors of the nursing home. Two Monday's ago he stopped eating and drinking and just slept.The last few days he spent unconscious. I was sadder then then I am now. It's not relief, definitely not shock, just an acknowledgement that we lost him bit by bit.

I helped my mum organise the funeral and start to reorganise her life and finalise dad's. I had an argument with a moron at AATP who wanted to charge mum $60 to change the home phone over to her name, and wanted a death certificate that day, one day after his death, to do it.

Mum received a letter from her health fund, Latrobe, addressed to dad and offering him condolences for her death. How could they get it so wrong? She had been the one talking to them on the phone.

The funeral was on Friday. A brilliant sunny day. About 70 people turned up, which was more than I expected.

I spent a lot of time writing last week, not speculative fiction but my father's eulogy. The first time I read it out loud it went for fifteen minutes. I eventually got it down to just under ten, but with a bit of ad libbing on the day, it probably went longer. No one seemed to mind, with a few people coming up to me after the service saying they appreciated me filling them in on my father's busy life.

So, I didn't get far editing my novella last week. And I missed three of the sessions at the coyotecon.com online speculative fiction conference (although I tried to log on late to the third one and it would not let me in).

I have been catching up on my newspaper reading over the last two days and must do some research on Google's bookstore which is just about to open. I have read that they will only give publishers 63% of the retail cost compared to 70% at Amazon. I still reckon Amazon will easily win the war because it is the place people go to buy books.

My printer died straight after I printed the final copy of the eulogy. I bought a new one yesterday. This one has five toner cartridges, with three different color cartridges. I am not sure whether it will it save me money by just having to replace the color that has run out instead of the entire color cartridge, or cost me more, by not having available generic refills.

Graham.