I’m now home from a week in the hospital. Not a fun time, but I’m feeling better. My blood chemistry and kidney function basically tanked due to chemo, so I’m on hiatus from that for a bit, and am currently on dialysis. No idea yet as to whether it will be permanent. Docs say my remaining kidney may recover itself in time, if it gets a bit of help in its filtering job.

Dialysis in the hospital proved to be quite a bit like chemo — i.e., lengthy and boring, but painless. The main difference seems to be that it doesn’t make me sick afterwards, which is A Good Thing.

This week I’ll be starting outpatient dialysis in a clinic. I’m hoping to take my laptop as I gain strength and work on writing. Winds of Vegeance is calling to me. My characters need me — they’re all in terrible danger. (Which is pretty much as it should be, in the middle of a novel.)

I seem to be gaining both strength and energy — a good thing, as I went into the hospital pretty wiped out. Today I’m going to do some household chores, and go for a walk. Lucky for me that the DC area weather while I was shut up in the hospital was wretched, but now it’s turned quite nice.

Before I go, I have a question for y’all. So many of my readers only know my work from V, or Star Trek, or Star Wars, so I’m thinking of reading the first chapters of my StarBridge novels as podcasts. I’ve been told I have a pretty good reading voice, and I had some dramatic training back when I was young, during the Devonian Era. What do you think…would that be a way to interest potential readers in my non-tie-in fiction? Reading aloud for a couple hours per day is something I think I could manage. I’d be interested in your comments, folks!

I want to thank everyone for the many, many expressions of concern and caring I’ve received. They really do help boost my spirits.