…by which, to be clear, I mean caffeine and sugar. Mostly caffeine, really. So much caffeine.

I know this is ultimately unhealthy, and I know that Brando Sando (allegedly) doesn’t even consume coffee, but he’s the unattainable ideal of us writers. (The man wrote a bunch of full-length novels in secret while writing his regularly scheduled books during the lockdown.)

On the other hand, there’s Stephen King and Philip K. Dick, both of whom abused hard drugs with gusto. King said there are entire novels from that part of his life that he simply doesn’t remember writing, and PKD’s output was legendary – until he died of stroke at 53. (To be fair, even goody-two-shoes folks can get fatal strokes, and it can’t be proven that the drugs played a part.)

And then there’s me, chugging an extra-large black coffee with a Tim Hortons donut, which had been preceded by a passable cup of coffee and an above-average slice of chocolate cake at a fun little coffee date… The nature of my creative fuel is almost hilariously geeky by comparison, but hey, if it works, it works.

During the long walk home (the damn bus strike – still – but also, the weather was perfect), an old seed of an idea finally sprouted and, well, I aim to spend the rest of the night typing up the first draft of my first foray into a horror story. (With heavy sci-fi elements, of course, because come on…) Then I’ll sleep on it (after binge-watching a few more episodes of Alone), apply several coats of edits and shoe-shine – and then it shall join the ranks of my as-yet-unsold short stories and start the big bounce between the genre magazines looking for this sort of thing.

And now… Time to type, eh.