Just checking in here. For the past few months I was swallowed by the great whale known as Finishing The Novel. That project is now in the hands of an editor and so out of my hands, if not entirely out of my brain.

I’d barely clicked Send when I started having stomach pain that turned out to be a gall bladder issue. I’m now down one body part and recovering. Surgery is a piece of cake for the patient–you just go to sleep. All the work is in recovery. I feel like I went ten rounds with an opponent who was told to work the mid-section.

I’ll have just enough time to recover before my wife and I set off on our Big Trip. This year marks our fiftieth wedding anniversary and we’re celebrating in style: a trans-Atlantic cruise lasting two weeks (Cape Canaveral to Barcelona by way the Azores, Madeira and the Balearics), followed by five days in Paris.

All this adds up to a vast neglect of the Altearth website. Once June arrives, though, there will be time once more. Time for blog posts, for Real History, for book updates, and all the usual activity. There will even be a new issue of the Altearth Chronicle. In the meantime, though, it’s going to be ow and wow for me, and an eerie silence here in Altearth.