In October 2024, Diane discovered that she had breast cancer for the third time, second time on the right. The first time had been twenty seven years earlier, and had been successfully treated, as had the second time on the other side, a few years later.

Those of you who have been through this, for yourself or for someone close to you, know how it goes: Consultations, biopsies, scheduling, surgery and recovery, chemotherapy, radiation-therapy, followups, and slow recovery from the side effects of all that treatment. Diane’s last radiation was April 14, 2025, and it took her six weeks to regain her strength.

Since the discovery, our attention and energy have been focused on Diane and what she had to go through, and on doing what she usually did for the family (cooking, shopping, cleaning) which left me little time for anything creative. I had been, and will continue to be, working on a story parallel to A Thing Forgotten, but our concern for Diane’s health meant that everything else had to take second place, or third place, and I didn’t get very far, just six chapters, not quite in first draft form. 

I published That Which Dwells Below, but I was not able to update my books website. I had lost track of how do certain things. I have help now, but it’s going to have to wait. Also, the host for Allen Wold’s Books has been unreliable, and I intend to move that site to my host for this blog. The process turns out to be more complicated than I had hoped. It’s going to take a while.

I’m beginning to feel like maybe it’s time for me to retire, even though I have two, maybe three more novels to write. At best, I have only enough energy for two to three hours in the morning for writing anyway, and struggling with Diane’s health has taken a lot of that energy out of me. And other things have come up which can’t be put off, reducing my writing week, sometimes to as little as one day. This does not, as you may imagine, make me very cheerful. 

But writing my stories is what I do with my life. And until I retire from life, I will continue. It will just take me longer. I’m not ready to quit yet.