Phoned my mother across the time zones at lunchtime PST, which is eight hours away in England. Nice to hear her voice every so often.

She tells me that as a grand dame of 96 she is finally getting online via broadband in the small Warwickshire village where she lives. I hope the information overload doesn’t get to her. No more letters, as we will probably be talking via Skype in the near future. I’ll give her a ring, walk her through the installation and sign up procedure, and bingo! Video calls. We talk to Angie’s side of the clan regularly via Skype, which has been an absolute godsend as far as communication goes. Especially as my brother and sister in law have just emigrated to Australia. The only issue is time difference.

There was the sad revelation that an Aunt I barely knew died two weeks ago. Should I go into mourning? I don’t think so because I hardly know anyone from that side of my Mothers clan. Out of my three maternal aunts, she was the last. So now I am Aunt-less. Loads of cousins, second and third cousins, but no aunts.

I feel no sense of loss because I hardly knew her, and getting upset over the death of a virtual stranger, even though I am closely blood related, does not touch me. To say it did might indicate a strain of hypocrisy, a sense of false mourning that is not yours by right. While the news is sobering, I cannot get worked up about it. We had no real connection and haven’t really heard from them much since I was small. Especially as relations between my mother and that specific part of our extended family have been less than cordial for several decades. All you really feel is “Oh. Right.” Nothing you can do about it, and the world keeps turning anyway. Is that too cynical? I don’t know.

No news as yet from Harper Vector, although I’m not really expecting anything. It was a shot in the dark as all these things are, and if they don’t like the Paul Calvin stories I’ll just take the first draft, polish it up a bit and punt it out onto Amazon myself. Nothing ventured as they say. Then I’ll finish ‘Darkness’ for Fan Expo in April 2013 and get that out there. See what happens. Keep on flinging enough stuff at the wall, and something is bound to stick.