Enjoying my self-imposed vacation from my novel

Well my vacation from my novel continues until the fifteenth of May but I am using my free time in a useful manner. I finally managed to get my driver’s license here in China.

It’s taken me almost a year to get my license here. Most foreigners living in China have passed their driver’s license in their home country and simply have to pass the theory test to get it in Chinese. I never passed my driver’s license, for various reasons, so had to do the whole thing in China from start to finish, theory and practice. 

I had originally planned to a write up of my experience passing my driver’s license, but I decided to use my experience as a basis for my upcoming short story “License to the stars.” I hope to have it done by the time my alpha readers are done with “The space greenhorn” so that I can send it out to them.

 Now that I’ve finally finished my driver’s license, I can go back to focusing on writing and my Chinese language studies. I’ll also be signing up at a new gym today.

Since I haven’t really been writing this past week, I have, of course, been busy reading when not studying for my driving theory test. I’ve managed to power through the first three books of Elizabeth Moon’s Heris Serrano series. I’ve found the third one especially interesting as it considers what a society would be like if people could get enough rejuvenation to essentially be immortal. The story tries to consider the consequences on society if the upper class became basically free from death while the lower classes still aged normally. I recall once reading a series of novels though I can’t remember the author that had a similar scheme. In that case, it was in a post apocalyptic world and random mutations would make it so that every so often someone would pop up who could not be killed. They eventually formed a kind of ruling class of the society that was being rebuilt.

 Avengers: Infinity war is coming out this weekend. Sometimes I hate how slow movies come out in China.