The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque

Finished my 4th novel for the year, "The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque". An interesting story about how an artist in New York named Piambo lands himself into a dark and mysterious contract to paint the portrait of a lady, Mrs Charbuque, whom he is not allowed to see but with whom he is permitted only to speak. Add in the twist that Mrs Charbuque earns a living by foretelling the future as guided by the two identical snowflakes encapsulated in resin inside a locket hanging by her neck. Throw in a side plot of a series of deaths of women from an obscure disease that causes them to cry blood from their eyes. Mix all of that with a rather murderous and supposedly deceased Mr Charbuque whose jealousy and hatred for his wife drives him to hunt Piambo down. Quite a story, I must say, and easily digestible in an afternoon. :) 3/5 for me.

Sometime after 8 pm this evening, I started to feel the tingling, uncontrollable twitching sensation in the area near my right shoulder blade. It's like the sensation in my right thigh the last time, a few days after surgery. The nurses then had told me that it was a natural phenomenon: the nerves were re-establishing contact, and that's a promising sign of recovery.

But right now, I am still battling the voices in my head that tell me I will never recover fully, and that I'll never be able to do the physical stuff I wanted to do...ever again...like rock-climbing, swimming, bulking up and martial arts...

Injury, to an athlete, is such a dark and despairing word.