April Fools Day.
The last few weeks have been so beautiful but weird that I barely got to write on my WIP.
I actually started a new project writing my memories over the past sixty-plus years, which strangely gave me more inspiration for my current work.
The incentive to collect my memories, some already on my blog under the header 1968SC, was that us humans are being bothered by a brand new virus called Covid-19, because it was first detected in 2019 or Coronavirus, the latter being actually a generic name for a family of viruses (its actual name is SARS-CoV-2 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 for all you intellectuals).
For people who have underlying problems like diabetes and heart disease it is quite deadly so I would probably not survive it.
People always bang on about how it seems to target the elderly, but I thought that is what most diseases do. A sort of pruning of dead branches.
Politics and Science have taken this disease and ran with it.
The result is that a lot of countries, especially in the developed world have gone in Lockdown.
People like me, who have read all those post-apocalyptic books like The Stand, by Steven King and many others, are already familiar with this phenomena.
Everybody is told to hide in their houses until the threat is gone or a cure has been found and we all know how that pans out, do we?
There are two big differences with the reality: In the movies and books no one talks about the lack of toilet paper, not even during the 11 years the Walking dead has been going, nor is anyone sitting it out in their pyjamas, as a lot of people seem to do now. i
Believe it or not, the mass hysteria after people started to think they would be prohibited from going out and mingling, was not so much stocking up on food, though some did buy enough to feed a small village, but to go crazy about the fact that they could possibly run out of toilet paper!
If things came to worst and they would die from lack of food, their bottoms at least would have to be clean.
My husband and I have just sat out all the hoarding and now two weeks later we can get everything we could possibly need in the supermarkets.
Haven’t seen any zombies yet either.
The media is full of numbers of death per day and totals, scaring the population even more.
The economy will go through the worst depression since 1929, all because of a few strands of RNA in a little capsule, not visible to the eye.
Personally I think the African continent will do much better with their survival rates as their average age is around 15 to our developed world around 45.
Even though their healthcare systems are mainly below ours.
For a number person like me it is sort of interesting to see for instance how Sweden, who does not want to sacrifice their economy to this disease and is willing to do this with their more vulnerable people, will fare compared to the countries who have closed down on time putting millions, with no recourse to a solid social security system , out of work.
It all started in China and has now raced around the world and reached the United States, which are not so united any more.
On a happier note my venture into the authoring world and the resulting twitter mania, has brought me quite some followers.
The nice thing is that they recommend a lot of books I either had never heard of or maybe wouldn’t have bought without their reviews.
The result is that my TBR pile, or should I say list as they are all on Kindle, has expanded to an enormous length.
Even just writing this blog I just bought a book by Dean Koontz that I saw while browsing for something completely different.
My map making skills have improved considerably using the great tool of Inkarnate.
See my example: The Island
Though I am a bit spoiled having the latest edition of the software thanks to my daughter in law, who designs for them.
It is such fun to do and often I am directed to a new plot just because of my map.
It is great too to see where everybody is and how long they should possibly take to get there.
For my timeline, I use a simple whiteboard tool called Scapple and print it out.
All in all, it should be ready for a full edit in a week or so.
I have been editing on the go as I need to reread my last chapter before I start a new one and then always am shocked how rubbish my English is and how clumsy a lot of the sentences.
But we live and learn.
Let’s hope I don’t kick the bucket before it is finally finished.
And to end on an even funnier note.
My brother has been keeping my spirits up by a constant barrage of Corona era funny photos and movies.
This one depicted what our dog Bonita must be thinking as we both use her as our excuse to go out and see other dog walkers from an appropriate distance to have a chat.
