This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will award a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
My average day has changed a lot in the last eleven months. Last May, after a little more than a quarter century in front of the classroom, I retired from teaching and took up fiction writing full time. At least, that was the original intention. As often happens, life tends to have other plans, and for the first nine months of my retirement I had to focus on taking care of an ailing parent. A few months ago, she passed on, and things are finally shaking out into what I’d perceived retired life would be.
While one may think that sleeping late is the ultimate joy, most days I wake up around seven, only thirty minutes later than I did while working. Breakfast and the news go together so I can see what happened in the world overnight, and by eight or eight thirty at the latest, I’m ready to hit the computer.
However, I don’t work straight through for any given number of hours or words. While I was teaching and writing on the side, I became accustomed to only doing a page or so at the most at any one time, and I find that now that I have practically unlimited time, I follow pretty much the same pattern. When I first sit down to get to work, I’ll do maybe five hundred words, or a bit more if I’m working on a first draft, then check my e-mail, take a walk, go for a drive, or get some errands done.
Periodically through the day I’ll write another page or so, maybe do a little marketing work, then go off and do something else for a while again. Off and on I’ll be responding to any e-mails I need to, and if the weather’s good maybe go for another walk or two. (All this, keep in mind, before my swimming pool opens up around the end of May. Lord knows how much I’ll be distracted then.)
One of the biggest changes, and one I was most looking forward to, between working and retired life is in the evenings. Even now, nearly a year later, it is so nice to stretch out on the couch and watch TV knowing that there are no lessons to prepare or papers to grade. For example, I taught high-school English, and most years about the time I’m writing this my spare bedroom would be piled with research projects, including outlines, note cards and other miscellaneous materials, that I would have to plow through before May.
This provides me time in the evening, if I wish, to rap out a couple of pages or so, but if there’s something on the tube I want to watch, cramming work in isn’t nearly the priority it was before.
This routine will probably change as the months and a couple of years go by. As I mentioned, though I retired in May of last year, it’s only been since about the first of March, roughly seven weeks ago as I write this, that the parental issue found its natural resolution. As such, I’m only now really able to ease into the retired/writing lifestyle, so I have no doubt I’ll be making some tweaks to my routine as time goes by.
They kept to the shadows so no one would know they existed, and preyed on the nameless who no one would miss. Where did they come from, and who was protecting them? In a city that had seen every kind of savagery, they were something new, something more than murderous. And one woman who had thought she had lost everything there was to lose in life would soon find that nothing could possibly prepare her for what would come when she entered their world.
Please listen to this audio excerpt
About the Author:
A retired high-school teacher and former college instructor, Kevin R. Doyle is the author of four novels in the Sam Quinton mystery series, all published by Camel Press. He’s also written four crime thrillers, including And the Devil Walks Away and The Anchor, and one horror novel, The Litter, along with numerous short horror stories published in small magazines over the years. The first Quinton book, Squatter’s Rights, was nominated for the 2021 Shamus award for Best First PI Novel. A lifelong Midwesterner, Doyle currently resides in Missouri and has loosely based the city of Providence in the Quinton books on Columbia.
Buy the audiobook at Books in Motion, Audible, Barnes and Noble, Chirp Books, Storytel, Overdrive, r Booktopia.
Thanks for hosting!
Good morning. I’d like to thank you for once again helping out with one of my tours. I’ll check in on and off for comments and questions.
I enjoyed the post. Sounds like a good book.
Sounds like a great book to read.
What’s your favorite writing-related quote?