Tag: Long Covid

New story “Spring Hope” is free this weekend!

Hello!

I hope you are doing well, and if you are in the path of the various heat waves out there at the moment, that you are staying safe and cool. We are currently officially in Extreme Drought here, which I’m not happy about, but the weather just doesn’t seem to listen to me very much.

Along with the extreme drought and the heat, I’ve also been dealing with other strange and annoying things, like last month’s bat incursion that resulted in me getting the whole post-exposure rabies prophylaxis sequence. The good news is that it’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience and that if I should ever have another rabies exposure, I will only need to get a booster shot or two, rather than the whole sequence with the antiserum. 

But because of all that, I decided to cancel the Kickstarter I’d planned for my new story Spring Hope, and just put it up on KU instead. It’s now currently out and available–for free!–on Kindle here. 

It takes place about 25 years after the end of Terminal Degree (also currently free on all retailers here). I don’t want to go into too much detail about it for fear of spoilers, but it has a lot of stuff about topics that are currently in the news, like Long Covid and phasing out animal experimentation. It’s short, barely a novella, and features cats! Cover and blurb are below.

How can you hold onto hope when what you love most is in danger?

Rowena Halley’s life hasn’t gone exactly as planned. Yes, she got the job and the man and the family. She’s built the life she’d dreamed of for so long. But life throws curve balls. Like the phone call that turns her spring break plans upside down.

Next thing she knows, she’s pounding the mean streets of Chapel Hill in search of a very special cat. Then she finds out that more than one life is at stake. Can she find a win-win solution before it’s too late for everyone?

This uplifting cozy noir short read is set 25 years after the end of the Doctor Rowena Halley series and is approximately 17,000 words long. It touches on serious themes like Long Covid, climate change, and animal experimentation, but with an ultimately positive message. 

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Again, it’s free on Kindle this weekend (and last I checked, it was #1 in Animal Stories in the Amazon free store, which was a thrill and no mistake!) and the link is here. The rest of the books in the series are all either free or 99c too. The Amazon series link is here. 

Happy reading, and stay cool!

Sid Stark

Rowena’s new job–cat rescuer?

Hello, and happy spring!

March is certainly coming in like a lion here. We’ve had wild swings between mid-80s and below-freezing temperatures, and it looks like we’re slated to get more next week. Since I teaching in an outdoor learning space, this is less than ideal.

In fiction news, I’ve written a new story about Rowena for my upcoming Kickstarter. You can find it and a number of other current and upcoming Kickstarters here.

The new story is set a couple of decades after the end of the series, and it’s about 

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

Rowena’s chase after the kidnappers of her daughter’s cat.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t too much of a spoiler? But yeah, Rowena does have a daughter after the main series is over, and this story is about how she and her college-age daughter team up to chase down a catnapper.

The story is a touch scifi, in that it’s set in the near future, but there are no flying cars or anything of that nature. What it does have are medical treatments based on things that are currently being developed. 

It’s informed by my own experiences with what is now being called PAIS (Post-Acute Infection Syndrome), an umbrella term that covers Long Covid, chronic Lyme, and infection-triggered ME/CFS, among other things. Having had it myself for over a decade now, I’ve been watching the Long Covid disaster unfolding with all the horror of someone witnessing a slow-motion collision between two freight trains. Carrying nuclear missiles. Whether it’s making accommodations for students who “just keep getting dizzy and fainting, I don’t know why–I spent a week in the hospital over break and they couldn’t find anything,” or talking to friends who are now too weak to wash their own hair, I feel like the grizzled old-timer in a horror story who escaped from the monster back in the day and is now trying to dissuade foolish tourists from going back into its lair.

That’s all very grim, but story itself is meant to be hopeful. I wanted to write something that would acknowledge what people with PAIS and their families are going with, instead of dismissing it as trivial and overblown they it tends to be in fiction (I see you, House and Cormoran Strike), but also gave readers (especially those with some skin in the game) a reason to feel uplifted and hopeful. There are also cute cats!

I’ll be sharing more about it in the upcoming weeks, but in the meantime, if you want first dibs on it, you can follow the prelaunch of my Kickstarter, as well as lots of other upcoming Kickstarters, here.

Happy reading!

Sid Stark