Twenty years ago, I wanted to do 1,000 stick fights, so as to assess the viability of minimal gear combat as a sport. That is simply the only way I can do percentages. This past May I was able to vex younger, better fighters just enough for them to stop me. I scraped by with luck with the machetes. Jon did agree to an LPR bareknuckle bout next year. I’m not fit enough, on reflection, to survive the clinch work without a further hip injury. So, that’s a dead idea.

Since then, the new gear and travel experiment without crutches has been iffy. The hips are not healing and the back is on the verge of going again. There is also a neurological problem. The nerve medicine that keeps me walking is beginning to dampen my thinking. To now, I have been lucky in the side effects. It has also been two years since I had a physical. Vertigo is normal, my ears ringing constantly and loud. I can only walk a straight line when I’m drunk, and can’t stand drinking but twice a week, well, three if I have company. So much for the Irish tragedy.

So, I look at the rampant schedule I have been keeping in 2025 and realize it is an accident of ego. After being a shrimp, crab and three-legged monkey for a year, I have enjoyed a brief adolescence. No longer any good at fighting, I would still like to try to get better at writing and to at least complete one of the history projects. [Addressed below.]

I will keep the commitments for 2025 and January 2026 with those fighters I have already trained with and plan on meeting in:

Norfolk

Lancaster

Saint Louis

San Bernadino

Costa Mesa

Jersey

Joliet

Exeter, MO in January 26, where I will leave my travel gear.

I could possibly get to 1,000 doing steel duels with James Anderson next week. In boxing I’m barely a useful punching bag. With the stick, I’m still a pain in the ass. But, doing the footwork dynamically requires me to keep the nerve medication up. It is beginning to look like writing or fighting. Additionally, I had a terrible dream this morning of the like I have previously ignored or even courted as writing subject matter, much and often to my demise. I have steel with me to train with. We should just work on technique, on slow sparring with the blade. I am keeping this quiet currently as the year will be another quarter done by the time this posts. A deep, crooked part of me wants to cheat Fate and try to hit 1,000 this year. That is not fair to the young men who sought me out as a coach, those very few humans who have met on this weird road a few punches or strokes ahead of Eunuch Earth who seeks to gather us all in Tranny America’s squishy group hug. They can get more work and benefit in us going easy than in helping me edge out with a rusty duel.

I will not be training after that and will be skipping West Virginia, Washington State and Ann Arbor. The latter two I hope to visit as a gimp writer later in 26, God willing.

Stick Fights = 689

Machete Duels = 247

Boxing Bouts = 30

For details:

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Writing Strand

It is yet hoped by the boy still squirming within the husk of the shell that ill-served him these 62 years, that he might depart the word world a better writer than he is now. In fiction, I suspect that I peaked in style between 2022 and 23 with Haft, The Last Whiteman, Ranger, Cox & Swain and SPQR. Likewise, Ball of Fortune in 2024, I suggest as my best history in terms of execution. That I may not improve in 2025 bothers, deep, as such may indicate permanent decline.

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Nonfiction Projects

-1. Sons of Aryas is not a project I’ve ever been capable of finishing. Norns, languishing as it should, is a dying away of the outline, a river’s end in a desert swamp.

-2. Plantation America remains a savage slog. I am committed to finishing the 1600s in 2025 with Planting America, the 1700s in 26 with Of A Planted Land and the 1800s to present in 27 with Rise of A Notion. December 27 will see the end of the project, the shuttering of patreon and the dispersing of the three volumes to the handful of supporters.

-3. I am limiting travel writing to one Graphomaniac Archive per year, this one being Negro PTSD.

-4. This summer must see the completion of Enemy of All Mankind, overlong already.

-5. Biographies in progress will be addressed in fey fashion as I happen upon those folks.

-6. The Son of God is now 7 volumes in outline, which I suggest is FAR beyond my capacity to complete. I must finish the first, Advent, this year, unless I want Alexander to continue harrowing my sleep.

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Fiction Projects

-1. My most researched novel, after Cox & Swain, looks to be Grace, my first ancient history novel, concerning the Agrianes. It is yet to be written and will be my fiction focus over the coming winter. The idea is to write 7 novels alongside the 7 Alexander histories.

-2. Incidents in The Life of Orion is an experiment in short fiction intended to deal with an increasingly disturbing dreamscape and also form a scrap yard for novels by reducing these to short stories of 1, 2 or 3 acts.

-3. The Warriors, Parasequel to American Dream Boat, should be finished on the return to its setting, Maryland, later this month, being June.

Thank you for your support. It has been strange.

In Norfolk, I did 29 machete duels with James Anderson, am pretty banged up, and called the third day of duels due to nerve malfunction in the right leg.

That brings me to 991combats of various kinds. The dying ego, I think, will not be able to resist another 9 fights. Boxing though, I’m shot its been 35 years since I’ve been able to hold my left glove up in a proper guard.