Happy February everyone. Not sure what the weather is like where you live, but it is freezing here. I got up this morning and the temperature outside was a whopping one degree. Later this week the low is supposed to be below zero. Once you get down into that category, no matter how you slice it, it’s cold. I don’t mind wearing my mask all the time with temperatures like that. At least it helps keep my nose warm. In case anyone is interested, today’s picture is of the Japanese maple outside my front window. I woke up the other morning to this view and thought it was pretty.
As far as the writing front is concerned, I got book #2 of the Reaping Covetous series back from the editor last weekend. It went for content review and she seems pleased with it. Enough so that the editor doesn’t think I need to change anything major in book #1 so that makes me super happy. Amazingly I finished writing book #3 yesterday. It still needs a lot of tweaking and I need to write the epilogue for it but the basic format is done. Right now it’s around 90,000 words and I finished it in a little less than two months. I worked really hard to do that and have given myself more than a few pats on the back. Normally it would take me over four months to write something of that length and that’s what I figured when I told the editor when to pencil book #3 in for content editing so it won’t go until late April. That’s okay because I still have so much to figure out to actually get it published and out there for people to hopefully read. If the schedule holds, the books should start going back to the editor starting in mid May for line editing and polishing up. Right now it’s my hope to get book #1 out in late summer/early fall. I was reading some statistics about book publishing the other day (BTW, don’t do that if you’re looking for something uplifting). On average over a thousand books are published each day on Amazon. That’s a lot of books! Right now I figure this is sort of like my hobby and I doubt I’ll make much money on the endeavor. Most likely I’ll be lucky to break even but I’m still doing it. It’s interesting. More than the money, I just really want people to read what I’ve written, to fall in love with my characters the same way I have. To do that you have to sell books so I suppose the two go hand in hand.
Veterinary work is going all right. Currently we are in our “slower” part of the year. And in some ways it is although not as slow as years past. A lot of it will depend on the upcoming weather and more to the point, road conditions. People don’t like getting out unless they have to when the roads are slick. I have CE conference in a couple of weeks and like so many conferences, this one will be virtual and I’ll be staying at home, glued to my computer. In a way I like this set up as I don’t have to try and find housing and care for my pets. On the other hand I’m really afraid I’m going to fall asleep at the computer screen, especially in the afternoon after lunch. I think the conference is 4-5 days long so we’ll see how I do. Hopefully I learn some new things that I can put into practice.
As an aside on the veterinary front, Friday I read the latest statistics on indebtedness for graduating veterinary students and the numbers are abysmal. Currently the median indebtedness is over $170,000 with a debt to income ratio over 2:1 (average starting salary for baby vets is about $80,000). That is an unsustainable trend. Some of these students are graduating with as high as over $300,000 in debt. That’s having a huge house mortgage with no roof over your head. I feel for these kiddos. For comparison (in case anyone is interested), I graduated in 2002 and was pretty average for indebtedness at the time with around $60,000. That was a lot then and I can’t believe what it has ballooned to now. It’s a huge problem and one that’s going to bite the collective veterinary profession in its ass pretty soon.
For now that’s all. I’m going to try and update at least monthly, hopefully with news about my upcoming series, Reaping Covetous. I’m so excited to finally be doing something with my writing. Besides my pets, it’s my joy in life. And at least my written characters don’t puke on the carpet (Newton and Copernicus) or try and eat my carpet (Fennik).
Until next time, stay safe, warm (if you’re in the northern hemisphere), well and sane.
MJ May
veterinarian and fiction writer 