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I’m sitting here in a shoulder holster with my newest gun, a Smith & Wesson M&P 9c snuggish against my side. We have a holster designed for the rig, but we’ve had to play with the fit of it. Breasts get in the way of guns if the holster or the rigging isn’t quite right. Before we decide exactly how the straps are going to stay, I’ll try different bras and see if it makes a difference. I’ve already found two suit jackets that slide over everything so you wouldn’t know the gun was there. Jon was surprised at how invisible it was when we got it all done. Frankly, so was I. But the rig would not work with either of the Brownings. That extra length here and there would be enough to ruin the line of the jackets. New holster, new shoulder rig, new gun, my draw is painfully slow. I would not want to trust my life to speed right now, because I would so loose. But that’s why you take the new stuff out and wear it around the house to see how it works. The whole thing is surprisingly comfortable, but part of that is that we can’t get the shoulder straps as tight as I’d want it. I never count a holster set up out until we’ve spent a few days playing with it, because my body is so not designed for most of this stuff. Too narrow through the shoulders, too much breast, too narrow of waist; it’s all designed with boys in mind. If we get the whole thing to fit me well, then we’ll share what it is, but if we don’t, I won’t share, because we’re basically trying to get it to fit someone that is so far outside what it was built for that it’s almost not a fair test of it’s worth. Jon bought the same rig so we’ll try it on him, too, and if it fits him well, again we may share. If I have good things to say, then I put it on the blog, I try to keep complaints to a minamum. He’ll have a different holster though, since the S&W is mine.

We ordered all the gun stuff some months ago, but only got it in recently. I’d hoped to be trying the stuff on while I was writing SKIN TRADE, since it’s for Anita research, but it missed the window. The window is now looking out on fairie or Los Angeles; it depends on the day. I have begun the next Merry book, but it’s leading me a not so merry chase in search of a plot thread that doesn’t unravel. Life continues at it’s usual pace with the new Merry book started, sort of, not happy with it yet, but that’s me. Work on the next issue of the Laughing Corpse comic continues. Some amazing images of Jean-Claude today. We announced the television movie adaptation just a few days ago, and that is moving along, as well. I’m almost done with a shorter piece that just demanded to be written, we’ll see what happens with it. Just writing all that and rereading it makes me go, wow, or maybe uh-oh. It seems like a lot, but it doesn’t feel like it. I am strangely calm, and unpanicked. Before Jon and I went to England for publisher business and research, I was a little overwhelmed. But in among all the work we had a few days to relax. I haven’t blogged about much of the England trip because we were only home for about a week when the next trip came up. That one was completely for fun, visiting friends out of state. Then a few days later the trip to Florida with the family. It was a lot of travel, but at the end of it all I felt better. My idea that if I work this hard, I need to play equally as hard seems to be a good idea. I spent so long working my butt off, and then collapsing, when what I needed to do was drag my tired self out to play. So I did, and I loved it. I think I may have hit on a way to fill that well of creativity up again. Let’s play.