Volume Four Publication and Other Tidbits (lower tiers)

Okay, the glorious day when Volume Four of Unintended Cultivator goes live on Amazon is almost upon us. The official launch date is November 12, 2024, which means a few things. First and foremost, it means that most of the Volume Four chapters will soon go back behind the paywall so that Amazon doesn't get angry with me. That will probably happen around Nov. 8.

If you want to pre-order a copy of the ebook on Amazon, you can find it here. There will be options for a paperback version, and the audiobook version should turn up as a pre-order on Audible or at least become available on the same day as the ebook. There will probably be a hardcover version available as well, but I haven't asked about that yet.

I will also have to give book 2 of Isekai Terry more attention than I expected because of behind the scenes things that are going on. Minimally, I need have it over the halfway finished mark in the next couple of months instead of sometime between now and next 4th of July the way I expected. The gods of publication move in mysterious ways, and sometimes we writer monkeys must bend to their wills.

I'm still trying to sort out this whole thing with parosmia making food smell and taste bad. I've stumbled onto a few workarounds that let me choke down actual meat. It turns out that if I'm willing to use enough of the right kind of hot sauce, it mostly numbs my ability to smell and taste. Of course, I can only stand eating so much hot sauce in any given week. It's a mixed blessing, since a mostly vegetarian diet is healthier, but I'm still trying to figure out how to get enough of the right things that I don't feel lethargic half the time. I'm taking a daily multivitamin to help make sure I don't become too deficient in any of those and to get some of those important micronutrients, but reality is that human beings are built to eat meat as part of their diet.

Dealing with all of that is a work in progress and, frankly, it's soaking up way, way more of my time than I would like. Unlike before when I cooked for myself when I felt like it, I pretty much have to prepare every single meal myself at home. There's just too many ingredients that are commonly used in restaurants that now make me want to gag when I smell them. It also means that most of the recipes I know by heart are useless to me because they also include some of those ingredients.

While I can cheat and keep it it fast with cereal or oatmeal at breakfast, lunch and dinner are entirely different animals. I'm looking at anywhere from 20 minutes to 90 minutes of prep for every single meal, every single day, before I ever even sit down to eat. It adds up fast, and that is time that I would have once spent on writing, or dealing with copyedits, or a ton of other admin type stuff. So, I hope you can all bear with me while I figure out the new normal with all of this.