I'm currently at 17 pages (5,300 words) on The Pastel Cowboy, which is okay, but I need at least another 6 pages, or about 1,000 words. It's going quite well, but not well enough as far as I'm concerned. It's been a real slog getting to this point and I didn't get as far as I wanted along the story's timeline. In fact, barely two weeks have gone by when I originally wanted to go nearly three months. I don't like writing in the micro, but events in Zach's life at this point are occurring rather slowly.

I've started working on a story for the Spring Anthology. It has three characters: Jamie, an eighteen year old high school senior; his boyfriend and narrator, also eighteen, but as yet unnamed; and the narrator's ninety-two year old great uncle, also currently unnamed. The only thing I know about the narrator and his great uncle is that they are Hispanic, but I haven't decided if they are recent immigrants or not. Interestingly, the narrator's mother is from a small town in Southeast Alabama and isn't Hispanic.

When I was stationed in Abilene, Texas, back in the early Seventies I knew a guy from California and whose family was old Spanish, having come over in the Eighteenth Century. Also, in the mid-Nineties, I worked for a woman whose family was from Cuba. Then there was the guy in basic training who had a traditional mile long Hispanic name, who, when asked by our DI, in Spanish, where he was from, responded in classic Brooklynese, "I don't know Spanish, I'm from Brooklyn."

I'm thinking the great uncle's generation will be the immigrants and the great uncle will be the last of his generation, his older brothers and sisters having already passed away. As I see it, he's living in a retirement home on Capitol Hill in Seattle, but I might put him in a small apartment in the same area. I haven't quite worked that out. The boys will be from North Park (my handy-dandy fictional city carved out of a large portion of the north end of Seattle).

It's still a little early to pin a lot of things down, but the characters are coming together. I'm, also, thinking of giving a boyfriend to the great uncle, but as I see it right now, that person may have recently died, just to set a little tension in the storyline.

On the personal front, taking three pills a day seems to be having a significant impact on the depression. I'm not suicidal anymore, but I am a bit more lethagic. Once I get to doing something, I'm able to continue doing it. It's just getting going that is the problem. And, I tend to save up a lot of similar tasks, like phone calls or writing projects, and doing them all a the same time. I don't know if that makes any sense, but today has been a writing day at the expense of all other activities, like exercising.