Authors Electric

                                                              One possible studio floor plan In January I'll move from a spacious one bedroom apartment into a 350-foot studio. roughly half its size. Job hunting has proved tougher than I'd expected. So has the daily ordeal of climbing up and down a steep staircase with my still stiff surgical knee. Tips and fees for food deliveries were getting astronomical. If it took me longer than 3-4 months to find work... Let's fast forward since many of you have had to make your own tough budgetary decisions. The apartment complex that rang my bells offered studios at savings of hundreds of bucks. But they then add on a slew of fees totaling roughly $200. At first, the move seemed ill-advised. All told, to lose half my living space, I'd end up paying close to what I pay now. BUT the amenities off...

In this new year, my life's become a war zone waged upon two fronts: 1)  Frantic efforts to pack for the move on August 2  to Tucson, AZ--though I'm recovering painfully from arthroscopic surgery. 2) Speaking of which, I must spend from 7-10 hours a day on rehab, both PT and home recovery. Since I have only until 8/2, when I move, I must make every hour count. So long for now to the old sense of myself as a practicing writer. My WIP, the final entry in the Seattle BOP mystery series, though drafted remains untranscribed. And a new series set in Tucson calls for more time and thought than I can spare. How could this be? I'd prepared for this move for a year. Yet here I sat, three weeks away--still at a loss for advanced tricks in moving orchestration. E.g.: I'll arrive by train on August 4 with several boxes of premium stuff, including an inflatable mattress and a collapsible chair. Assorted boxes will arrive by post while the bulk of my stuff will be delivered by mid-Au...

  So far I haven't heard P-51 Mustangs or Spitfires roar overhead or seen aerial bombs oh-so-glad to go off...but I can say my own war's on the way. I'll explain.  On August 2, I'll leave Seattle, Washington, by train, bound for my new place in Tucson, Arizona. The apartment is unfurnished, my personal effects arriving in increments--by movers, mail, and UPS. The absolute essentials I must bring with me by train since I need to hit the ground running when the war begins in Tucson: hunting for a job and continuing my WIP. I've been anything but idle, carefully packing boxes and bags for the movers and mail. I've even set up an advance Tucson delivery address for furnishings from Amazon. A collapsible desk will await me. But till now I felt buffaloed by the vast conundrum: How, with my life in such chaos can I access all my immediate needs--easily and quickly? From flash drives to sun protection shirts, from Moleskines for my WIP to Tucson maps and travel docs, fr...

  No. no, Austin Powers! I don't mean shake your booty, I mean move your butt--as in relocate from coast to coast, state to state, possibly country to country. Lord knows, I've done them all for a grand total of some 30 moves. So you can imagine my consternation, as an expert on the subject, when I found myself hamstrung and befuddled in the middle of  a move: from Seattle to Tucson, Arizona.  With just three months to go before D-Day in August, and with a strong foundation already in place, my head had started spinning from thoughts of the puzzles I couldn't complete:   --How, on a limited budget, could I afford a professional mover and a junk remover?   --How could I adapt to the changes since 2014, when I moved to Seattle with only a steamer trunk and four boxes? Amtrak will no longer handle a trunk--or allow checked luggage for relocation. Plus, in the past eight years, I've acquired a slew of possessions I value--not the least of them being new books. ...