Good News, Bad News

I've blogged before about the advanced macular degeneration in my left eye. The six weeks in-between treatments passes too quickly. Today I had my sixth appointment with the retina specialist.

My vision has deteriorated over the last three visits. Today my left eye couldn't even make out the letters on the top row of the eye chart. I was shocked and more than a little concerned.

Paralleling the deterioration in my eyesight, the retina scans I get every visit show my condition has worsened. Linda, the delightful "little girl" who does the scans showed me the images from today and my last two visits. Even my untrained, nearly-blind eyes could see the progression from bad to really bad. I knew I was about to get another shot in the eye.

The retina specialist explained that after an initial positive response, some patients stop responding to the Avastin injections. Apparently I'm one of those patients. A subset of these patients have success with injections of Lucentis. Hopefully I'm one of them.

Except for the one time I didn't have to have an injection, each visit to the
retina specialist costs about $2,000. Of that, $75 is the Avastin. Lucentis costs nearly $4,000 per dose. Like that's not bad enough, I'll need the treatment every four weeks instead of every six.

Thankfully I have good insurance. Still, I had to fill out a ton of paperwork, including an application for assistance from the Chronic Disease Foundation which will cut my $400 per injection copay in half. I have to send them a copy of last year's tax return, too.

Increasing the frequency of my visits is upsetting. But the idea of losing my vision upsets me even more. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Lucentis treatments will work.

I've been asking my partner and others to either drop me off or pick me up from the appointments. I really hate putting people out, especially as often as the appointments roll around. Everyone I know works during the day.

Today I drove myself home from the appointment. I took scotch tape with me and taped two pairs of the freebie shades available from the office inside my giant, old man sunglasses. It worked well enough to get me from the doctor's office to the home of...

The Crotchety Old Man

My World & Welcome To It

Saturday the writer's group discussed the first 5000 words of Addicted, my first work of fiction. By and large the comments were positive. Especially considering it's my first attempt at fiction, I was very pleased. Since Saturday I've been working on revising the manuscript based on their feedback.

Except for me, everyone at this meeting was female. They said they needed to know more about what Josh (the main character) is thinking and feeling--especially during or immediately after the one sex scene they read. Adding his reaction to the situation never would have occurred to me and I'm grateful to the group for pointing out specific paragraphs where more insight is needed.

The group gave me a lot of minor edits and pointed out my tendency to go overboard describing action. They offered several specific suggestions to strengthen or tighten up specific scenes. To the best of my knowledge, all their suggestions have been incorporated in the revised draft.

The biggest criticism was that Josh comes across as more than a little whiny. I tried to show how devastated he was by the recent (bad) ending of his 17-year relationship. Since almost everyone felt the same way, I was forced to agree I'd probably gone too far. Again, I'm grateful for the input (and equally glad they didn't see the earlier versions where even I thought he was too whiny).

They also encouraged me to eliminate the first chapter. The purpose when I wrote it was to lay-out all the back story. Essentially it's written like my memoir, Glass Houses--all telling and no showing. Once I got past the first chapter I felt a lot more comfortable writing fiction. Tossing out the first chapter made sense. It took a lot of effort but I finally managed to incorporate all the important parts into the second chapter (now Chapter One) and cut the rest.

Some found Josh unlikable because of his behavior. He smokes pot like crazy to fill the void in his life since the break-up and in the opening chapters has a couple of drinks. The clincher for some was Josh driving while stoned and drunk. I'm sticking to my guns on this one but did go back and add more about his motivations for the behavior.

A few readers outside of the group have been upset about Josh having unprotected sex. Again, I'm not backing down. However I did add more about what he was thinking and feeling to cause his reckless behavior.

Addicted is a work of fiction. The characters and the story are made up. But the world where the characters live and in which the story takes place is real. The things that happen may not be pretty or moral or politically correct, but they reflect a certain reality. I know that reality is foreign to many potential readers, but once upon a time it was home to...

The Crotchety Old Man

Ready for the Rapture

According to Harold Camping and his followers, the rapture will take place tomorrow with a ginormous earthquake. He cites his extensive research of the Bible and guarantees the date. He has since added the big event will occur at exactly 6:00 p.m., Eastern time.

Mr. Camping is a Christian radio broadcaster and President of Family Radio. Unlike the Westboro Baptist Church which is composed mostly of Reverend Phelp's family, Camping has followers across the United States and around the world. I searched but was unable to determine whether his followers number in the hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands.

You don't have to be one of Camping's followers to be raptured. Good Christians and 144,000 Jews will apparently make the cut. Since I'm neither Jewish nor Christian, I'm absolutely certain I won't be among the elect.

I'm not upset. Having been excluded from all things Christian for most of the last thirty years, I'm used to being left out. I do, however, have some concerns.

How will I know which of my Facebook friends were among the elect? If the rapture occurs I'm sure several of them will go. If so, will they disappear from my list of friends?

Same for Twitter. I'm now following more than 1000 entities resulting in more than 150 followers who I'm sure read every Tweet. Will the elect vanish from Twitter, too?

I also worry about the impact of the rapture on my blog. I'm up to 33 followers, including several who never read it because I pissed them off a long time ago. Will the elect disappear from my list of followers?

Will the rapture cause a big drop in my blog stats? My numbers have dropped lately because I've been working on my second book, Addicted, instead of writing blog posts. A bigger fall-off in my numbers would make blogging feel like an even bigger waste of time than it already does.

What about my writer's group? We meet at 5:30 tomorrow. I submitted the first 5000 words of Addicted for review and discussion. I'll be totally pissed if at 6:01 the only person remaining is...

The Crotchety Old Man

Today in My Garden

I see a lot of people trying to take garden pictures on sunny days. Too much light washes out all the colors. Cool, cloudy weather today means it's a great day to take pictures in the garden.

Lollipop Lilies are the first of the lilies to bloom in my garden. They multiply like crazy and should probably be divided after blooming this year. We'll see if I remember!

My hydrangeas are doing great this year. Here is a close up of Forever Blue Hydrangea. With a little lime around the base of the plant the flowers would be almost purple.

This hydrangea is better than seven feet tall and at least as wide. I call it Big (Forever) Blue Hydrangea. Go Big Blue!

Something keeps eating the goldfish out of my half-whiskey barrel fountain. Yesterday I got six more goldfish and a Guard Owl. We'll see if it works.

Most the hollyhocks you see in gardens today look like the pompoms cheerleaders use. They seed everywhere and the offspring have reverted to singles. I like them better than the original plants.

And that's what you'd see today if you were walking through the garden of...

The Crotchety Old Man

Six Sentences Sunday

The following is my second excerpt for Six Sentences Sunday from my work in progress, Addicted. After meeting friends for cocktails, Josh Freeman has a little too much to drink. Sexy Michael DeLuca volunteers to walk him home.

Inside the apartment the pair embraced again. Josh untucked the t-shirt from Michael’s jeans, pulled it over his head, and ran his hands over the furry, muscular chest he had uncovered. Michael yanked Josh’s shirt over his head in a swift motion, kissing him thoroughly while he, too explored Josh’s naked chest with his hands.

Josh moaned, caressing the muscular arms and tracing his fingers down Michael’s spine as the two kissed like teenagers at a drive-in movie. Pulling away, Josh looked Michael in the eye and saw lust equal to his own. Taking Michael by the hand, he led him through the apartment to the bed.

Inside the apartment things get too hot to share here on...

The Crotchety Old Man

On Becoming a Writer

Nearly a year ago I started writing my first book. It was a memoir because the only thing I knew was to write about what I know. I finished Glass Houses in a matter of months and after submitting the manuscript to the agent of my dreams, less than two weeks later received a rejection.

After receiving the rejection I joined a local writer's group. We meet twice a month. I've been going to the meetings since March and have really learned a lot from the other writers. I submitted Glass Houses to a publisher and am waiting to hear back from them.

Because of what I learned from the group I started writing my first work of fiction. I'm still writing what I know, which means my book revolves around gay characters. One of the people in my group invited me into a couple of Facebook groups; one for writers of male/male romances and the other for people who write erotic romance novels I'd describe as kinky.

Since joining these various groups I've been reading a lot of blogs, excerpts, and posts on Facebook written by other writers. It's been a real education. I had no idea the market for erotic romances about other than traditional male/female couples was so vast.

I had to leave the group for kinky writers. Frankly, much of the discussion either freaked me out or gave me the creeps. Whatever floats your boat and to each his own but swinging, group sex, and kinky scenes are just not for me.

I don't think I'm a male-male romance writer, either. Many of the writers in this group seem obsessed with gay sex. The irony is that most are women, including many married women.

My manuscripts do contain gay sex scenes. However, the stories are not about sex. I write about people who happen to be gay and sometimes have sexual encounters. In every case the sex scene is supposed to show something about the main character.

The biggest surprise is the quality of much of the writing I see from published authors. I'm not talking about a typo here and there--we all make mistakes. Many of the errors are just sloppy or careless while others reflect a limited knowledge of grammar I had to learn in middle school. Some of it is just awful.

For better or worse, exposure to all these different writers has helped me to see what I've always known. I was born to write. It may not happen next week, or next, month, or even next year--but one day you'll be able to buy a book written by...

The Crotchety Old Man

Today in My Garden

The calendar may not say so but summer has definitely arrived here in Athens. Highs this week in the 90s will likely mean the demise of pansies, violas and other winter-blooming annuals. Daffodils and other spring bulbs have already gone dormant for the summer.

Hydrangeas like this "Forever Blue" are just coming in to bloom. I bought one a year or two after I moved in. A vase full of blooms sprouted roots so now I have several.

Because weeding it became a full time job, I put Preen in the butterfly garden which will likely mean an end to the larkspur, silene, and California poppies seen here. The Stella D'oro Daylilies are just starting to bloom. The silver stalk is Lamb's ear.

My neighbor gave me a bunch of red hot pokers two years ago. They've done really well and are now approaching full bloom. You can also see a hollyhock approaching bloom and a groundcover rose I'm sorry I bought because it wants to sprawl all over the garden with 12-foot long thorny stems.

Lilies are budding up all over the garden. Normally the deer eat the flower buds. Thanks to Deer-Off, this will be the best year yet for lilies. When they start blooming, you can count on seeing a few pictures right here on...

The Crotchety Old Man