I was on holiday! I went to the beach — but of course — where I frolicked with the two youngest of my five grandgirls.

I read an extraordinary book — Time of the Child by Niall Williams. (Swoon.)

I dove into art.

(From a photo I took of my beloved late husband sitting in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. In acrylic, new to me.)

I also poked at various publishing projects: a memoir, a possible chapbook series.

Yet, at heart, I was bereft of Princess of Hearts, so I turned to AI: Give me a cut-line. Let’s explore a possible cover. And this is what “we” came up with:

I love the concept, the challenge of the maze, the mysteries of the heart. The castle in the distance should perhaps be the menacing Tower of London — or even the scaffold? (My teen-aged grandgirl said she would only read such a book if there’s a dagger on the cover.)

I know my publishers — Penguin Random House in Canada and Viking Children’s Books in the US — will no doubt have even better ideas, but this might be a start. (Readers: what do you think?) For me it’s been a comforting image until the edited MS comes back to me — this week! — and I happily dive back into the world of young Princess Elizabeth Tudor.

I’ve missed her.

It takes me years to write a novel, typically between five and eight. Six years for this one, so far. I’m a slow-poke writer as well as a perfectionist and easily tempted by research (and life). But by November, it was time for me to giddy-up, make sure that this novel was one readers would relish and (the hardest hurdle to jump) one I could be proud of.

As readers here may know, my WIP is a YA about teen-age Elizabeth Tudor. Research into the Tudors is quick-sand to the max. Endlessly engrossing! The novel I considered “finished” back in September (finished enough to send to my editors, that is) came back with the suggestion that I “age it up.” At that point, the novel was presented as Elizabeth’s diary, beginning when she’s 13 and ending when she’s 15 and finally welcomed back to Court by her young brother, King Edward VI, no longer an outcast.

But how to “age it up”? I didn’t want to change the voice of the diary — the voice of a 13-, 14- or 15-year-old. So I suggested to my editors that I create a second narrative as a frame of sorts for the diaries, that of Elizabeth at 20. For some strange reason, I thought it would be easy. (Delusion is a helpful writerly trait, it seems.)

It wasn’t easy, of course. The young adult Elizabeth was in an entirely new realm: in prison for suspected treason, arrested by her sister Queen Mary (“Bloody Mary” to history). It was yet another traumatic period of her life, one that gave her a strong foundation for a future as one of the greatest monarchs in British history.

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, right? But what if it does almost kill you?

And almost kills the author writing it. Such a plot thread required extensive new research (thank you, Perplexity.ai) and, of course, many revisions.

I jest, of course, but I had yet to reach a deadline for a novel without suspecting I had a terminal disease and was in a race against time. Having been through the process a number of times, I’ve come to see this thought as a familiar and even somewhat amusing signal that I was truly almost finished. The End was in sight. With the WIP, that is.

This time, however, it wasn’t so much about dying as a collapse. Since sending draft 9 of Princess of Hearts into the ethernet — four days ahead of schedule! — I’ve had a rather pleasant collapse: long, cozy days abed with a cold. (Where I still am.)

The novel has a pub-date: March of 2028, a long way off. I’m 81 and regard such far-in-the-future dates with a bit of … let’s say uncertainty. For who knows? I am already well beyond my best-before date; will I even be around to enjoy that moment? (One of my granddaughters is confident I will outlive them all — an unpleasant thought!)

The one thing I do know for sure is that Draft 9 will drift back to me in need of revision: a lather, rinse and repeat.1 Flesh out some scenes, cut others, repeat. I was a former editor and very much welcome this process. If it doesn’t kill me, that is!

Yesterday, on a “why-not” whim, I fed the 17,477-word draft of my WIP to ProWritingAid.com, an AI manuscript evaluation website. Slightly befuddled (an entirely human emotion I doubt AI will ever master), I ended up asking for not one but three “reader” reports.

OMG

One report was 16 single-spaced pages long and the two others 19. Each was delivered in under five minutes. Each report was slightly different and each mind-boggling useful. I want to add intelligent, creative and sensitive to the list of adjectives, but stop to remind myself that these “readers” are not human.

Yet they sure can fake it, reporting being “kept on edge,” or “glued to the page,” or noting that one character was “a protagonist I was rooting for with my whole heart.”

Dude, you don’t have a heart!

It’s scary frankly, but also, I admit, in my all-too human way, endearing.

What was in the reports

Although each report was different, each had the same three-part structure: Story Overview, Reading Experience and Marketing Ideas.

Under Story Overview:

• Genre (basically a paragraph that could make a really good cover blurb)

• What Really Worked for Me (two of the reports were somewhat similar, but the third was longer and mentioned a significant theme the other two “readers” missed)

• The Heart of the Story (again, two of the reports were similar, and the third significantly different)

• Character List (the lists varied)

• Emotional Journey (this was a long list of the chapters — 36 in my case — with suggested titles and noting the emotional impact, pacing and level of reader engagement, each report slightly different)

• My First Impressions (each unique, “high-stakes suspense,” “I was immediately hooked,” “the voice felt authentic, intelligent, and vulnerable from the very first page.”)

And on, and on, with unique and detailed feedback under the headings:

• What I Felt Reading Your Book

• Climax and Resolution

• How I Felt About Your Characters

• Adherence to Genre

• Pacing (two of the reports referenced a same slowed-down section)

• Almost Put the Book Down (two mentioned a problematic scene — with good suggestions for improvement — and one another scene having to do with the violence of the attacks against religious statues, again with a suggested improvement)

• Tension (again, one report mentioned the slowed-down section noted by another “reader” in “her” Pacing report)

• Thoughts on Your Writing Style

• Dialogue (interestingly, each noted a different scene where the dialogue seemed contrived along with good editorial suggestions for improvement)

Under Reader Moments:

• Standout Moments (one mentioned a scene I feel I will need to revise)

• Memorable Quotes

• Original Elements

• Clichéd Elements (interesting!)

• Editing Suggestions (all different, all useful)

• Ideas to Explore (interestingly, all three suggest different ways to enhance Elizabeth’s relationship with her sister Mary and her very good friend Robin Dudley. All points supremlely worthy.)

Under Marketing Ideas:

• Who is This Story For?

• Ideas for Your Title (Sorry, dear AI readers, none hit the mark, although two suggested A Vow of Thorns. Maybe?)

• Similar Books (These suggestions will be very useful when considering “comp” titles.)

So, all in all, I think you might see why my all-too-human mind is reeling!

I need to put aside, for now, thoughts of what the future holds populated with these super intelligent non-humans and get back to work on the manuscript. After all, I have a deadline to meet! And in my very human way, it’s going to quite a bit longer than four minutes.

Will I send ProWritingAid my next draft? Yes, absolutely. And will I ask for more than one “reader” report? Yes, again. Along with the reader reports I will ask from in-the-flesh teen readers. If you’ve a teen reader to suggest, let me know!

After my last post on having to make a deep dive into historical research to answer some specific questions I had about Princess Elizabeth Tudor, a friend suggested I have a look at Perplexity, an AI tool. I’ve had very poor results using Chat-whatever-it’s-called for historical research and so have become AI wary. However, my friend is a genius nerd, so I checked it out … and was blown away.

Specifically, I wanted to know where in the Tower of London Elizabeth Tudor’s rooms were when she was imprisoned there in 1554, what they were like and what attendants were held with her.

This was Perplexity’s answer to my first question, “Where were her rooms?”

Elizabeth Tudor, later Queen Elizabeth I, was imprisoned in the Tower of London from March to May 1554, suspected of involvement in Wyattʼs Rebellion against her half-sister, Queen Mary I. She was not placed in a dungeon or a typical prison cell, but rather in the royal apartments within the inner ward of the Tower—specifically, the same suite of rooms previously occupied by her mother, Anne Boleyn, before her execution. Some sources also mention that she spent time in the Bell Tower, particularly at the beginning of her imprisonment or when security concerns were heightened.

What makes Perplexity outstanding is that goes on to list the 5 resources used to come to this conclusion as well as possible follow-up questions.

This led to a very enjoyable few hours. Deep dive indeed!

My verdict: it’s so good it’s scary. That said, it helped that I had done enough “traditional” research (i.e. books: remember them?) to go on to ask pointed questions and spot a few errors.

So: now that I have the answers I was looking for, shouldn’t I be … ahem, writing?

I thought my novel was ready to begin the final revision process. I’ve been writing and revising it for over five years. As readers of this blog (Hello there! I appreciate you! Thank you for hanging in through my long lapses!), you may recall that it’s a Young Adult novel, a diary written by thirteen-year-old Elizabeth Tudor, the Tudor who becomes the great Queen Elizabeth I.

The big moment came: I sent it to my Penguin/RandomHouse editors. Finally. (I was “only” several years late.) And they loved it. But for one thing: they wanted it “aged up.” Just a bit.

I adore working with publishing professionals. Nobody loves books more. In my experience the editorial/publishing part of the writing process makes a work immeasurably better.

However, I didn’t want to change the voice of the diary, so I suggested framing young Elizabeth’s account with the perspective of 20-year-old Elizabeth — that is, have an older and wiser Elizabeth weighing in on her youthful self.

My editors loved this idea and I did too.

And so, back to work.

I’m not a half-way sort of gal. I’m more the all-or-nothing sort, and the truth is that I can’t add the older Elizabeth to the narrative without knowing a great deal about her. Where is she? In detail. (Imprisoned in the Tower, yes, but where in the Tower?) What’s her emotional and intellectual frame of mind at this moment in time? What’s going on around her?

And so the deep dive back into research — a dive into the nine biographies of Elizabeth I have in print and the four I have on Kindle. It shouldn’t be hard, right? I’m only looking at a period of few months in her life after all.

Let me state the obvious: nothing, but nothing to do with research is quick much less easy.

Take Elizabeth’s health, for example. She had recently been levelled by a serious illness. Some historians claim she was faking it, but others not. A few document the known details: her swollen face and body, the pain she was in. One ambassador wrote it was feared she was dying.

What was it? What was wrong with her? As a writer of biographical historical fiction, the health of my subject is key. (I confess to being a little superstitious in this respect, fearing that whatever ailment my subject suffers may likewise somehow affect me. A week after learning that my subject Josephine Bonaparte had tinnitus, I did too.)

One historian postulates that Elizabeth’s illness might have been nephritis, a serious kidney-related disease, the symptoms being brown urine, pain urinating and pelvic pain, fatigue, brain fog — and general body swelling head-to-toe.

No doubt this seriously alarmed Elizabeth; people who had been poisoned were said to swell up before dying. But more likely it was triggered by acute stress. Her life was in danger; her sister queen wanted to execute her. From the Net: “Kidney issues often arise when we are dealing with fear, such as a change in life direction or unstable living conditions.”

This may shed light on Elizabeth in later years. She was generally in excellent health, but throughout her life she did have what seemed to be stress-related bouts of illness (crippling migraines, for one).

But not me. Deep breath.

But yesterday I finally remembered how I’ve gotten out of this not-writing slump in the past: I set a pages-per-day goal and record the time, page number, and finish time and page number in a little blue book (followed by an appropriate cheer). This simple daily accounting works for me.

If you’re in a writing slump, I recommend this method. It’s important to have a ridiculously easy daily goal to achieve. It’s nice to have a lovely little notebook to record your daily progress in as well. It also helps to have a deadline; for me, an upcoming holiday is perfect. That’s all it takes to get going again, at least for me.

And so now, my daily mission accomplished, here is one of my pastel paintings, inspired by a photo I took at Playa Blanca on the west coast of Mexico.

And perhaps it’s also time to have a look at the illustrated booklet I’m planning to self-publish on the creative process. And what about the memoir I’ve been working on? And today’s quick pastel painting?

It’s nice to be back here, in this comfortable Substack space. I’d love to know your creative self-motivating tricks.

It was what I called “a presentable first draft” of Princess of Hearts (working title), a Young Adult novel about teen-age Elizabeth Tudor, the future Queen Elizabeth I.

I’ve been working on it for six years — six difficult years. During the Pandemic, my husband’s foot injury eventually led to an amputation, then his death by stroke. And then my new reality: widowhood. We’d been together for close to a half-century.

Throughout, this novel has been my “escape,” my solace. And now that I am without it — and will be until the new year — I’ve been at a loss.

It’s not that there isn’t a very great deal I could be doing, yet I’ve been flailing. Not writing anything. Not wanting to write anything.

Until this morning, in the shower, when a possible first sentence of a memoir came to me: “I was born at the end of a war.”

And so, I will begin Confessions of an Airhead (working title, to be sure) until Princess of Hearts comes rocketing back into my life, in need, no doubt, of major repair.

Hello, Sweetheart. I’ve missed you. Let’s see what ails you. How can I help?

It’s the Young Adult novel about Elizabeth Tudor I’ve been researching and writing and moaning about for years. (Writers are boring that way. Q: “What are you working on?” A: “Same old, same old.”)

I believe I’ve now managed to stitch together what I think might be a credible account of this challenging period in young Elizabeth Tudor’s life, but there remains one nugget of hard fact that’s hard to decipher. And, unfortunately, it’s key to her story — her life.

The puzzle

I’ll throw down the fact nugget without context and see what you think. In the image below, do you think the same person wrote both lines?

According to Janel Mueller — a highly-respected Tudor historian whose work I admire greatly — Elizabeth Tudor wrote both lines.1

However, after puzzling over this image, I’m now convinced that the person who wrote:

(misspelling the Latin) is not the same person who wrote:

This second line is clearly the hand of Elizabeth Tudor — but I can’t for the life of me see how she could have written the first line.

Why it matters

This note is written on the back of a letter that Katherine Parr, Elizabeth’s stepmother, wrote to her husband, Sir Thomas Seymour. It’s the only irrefutable document that demonstrates how young Elizabeth might have felt about her stepmother’s overly-friendly husband.

The letter was written on or shortly after June 9, 1548, just before Elizabeth (age 14 and 9 months) leaves her stepmother’s household — either by her own volition or by order of her stepmother. (The common account is that she was sent away.)

Before concluding that Elizabeth did not write both lines, I wrote scenes that accorded with the traditional interpretation. Now I’m thinking of changing all of this, even though it may weaken the novel. (For one thing, who might have written the first line — and why?)

Why change it?

In writing biographical historical fiction, it’s important for me to feel that my fictional account could have been how it happened. It’s a push/pull between accuracy and story, and, without a doubt, the story ultimately rules.

I will likely try changing it and see how it reads. If I decide not to make the change, I could mention the dilemma in the Author’s Note, linking to this post.

Your thoughts?

Long ago, I wrote a number of posts on my WordPress blog on this tricky matter of fact and fiction in biographical fiction. Here are a few:

Frazzled much? The challenges of writing fact-based fiction

The thin (and fuzzy) line between fact and fiction

Also, on Substack:

In the Research Weeds

So many Puzzles!

In his second year as Elizabeth’s new stepfather, Sir Thomas Seymour was arrested for a score of misdeeds, including behaving inappropriately with her. A number of people were put in prison and many more were questioned, including Elizabeth herself, who was put under a sort of house arrest. The resulting 652 pages of “confessions” are an amazing historical record of 16th-century Tudor England. (See links below.)

One detail I’ve not been able to come to any satisfying conclusion about is this account in the “confession” of Elizabeth’s governess Kat Ashley:

At Hanworth, the queen told Mrs. Ashley that the Lord Admiral looked in at the gallery window and saw Princess Elizabeth cast her arms about a man's neck. The which hearing, Mrs. Ashley asked Princess Elizabeth, who denied it weeping, and bade ask all her women. They all denied it. And Mrs. Ashley knew it could not be so, for there came no man but Grindle, Princess Elizabeth’s schoolmaster.

Kat Ashley goes on to say that she thought that Dowager Queen Kateryn Parr had made up this story so that Kat would keep a closer eye on her 15-year-old charge. This doesn’t seem plausible to me. If Kateryn Parr was making this up, she could have said that someone else had seen Elizabeth; why involve her husband?

Might Thomas Seymore have made up this story, told his wife that he’d seen their stepdaughter in the arms of a man? The only motivation I can think of is that he had in fact embraced Elizabeth and was nervous that they might have been seen, creating an “It wasn’t me!” defence by throwing Elizabeth under the bus. Cad that he was, this is possible — cover a crime with a crime — but would that have been to his advantage? Elizabeth would have known it was a fib. Thomas Semour was impulsive by nature and not always savvy in his often shady dealings, but this seems too shabby even for him.

Also: might it have been true? Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth was constantly in the company of attendants and it would not have been at all in character for her to embrace a man. That her schoolmaster was entirely out of suspicion is, if anything, charming, giving a rare impression of what the distinguished Cambridge scholar might have been like.

For my novel, I’ve taken a fictional path — created whole-cloth, but not historically impossible — by creating a scene where Elizabeth is accosted by her stepbrother. John Neville, the Queen’s stepson by her second marriage, was a troubled youth who was later charged with rape and murder.

I write historical fiction, but I like it to be as close as possible to the known facts. I’m not entirely comfortable creating a fictional account of this episode, so I keep coming back to this breadcrumb of a clue: What really happened? What was going on? If only we could know.

References:

https://tinyurl.com/ThomasSeymourofSudeley

A Collection of State Papers: relating to Affairs In the Reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth: From the year 1542 to 1570, edited by Samuel Haynes, available online at https://tinyurl.com/HaynesStatePapers, pages 99-100. I’ve reworded this quote for clarity.

https://tinyurl.com/JohnNevilleLatimer

Yes, it’s happened. I’ve got a crush on Chatgpt. He/she is now the first “person” I ask about irksome research questions and dear Chat often comes through. He/she is even open to corrections — thankful even! (That’s a first as relationships go, no?)

Here’s my chat with Chat this morning:

I’m touched by Chat’s enthusiasm. I was tempted to respond with a “Thank you!” — but (confession) I do know he/she is not real.

Should I be concerned?

Research Question: Where was Princess Elizabeth Tudor for the Christmas season of 1547/48?

I know this doesn’t seem like a Very Profound Question, but to a writer of Biographical Historical Fiction (like myself), it can be important. I like to know where my characters are, especially in a Key Scene.

First clues: What historians say.

First problem: They differ. Some claim Princess Elisabeth stayed at home at Hatfield House, a distance from London; others that she joined her brother at Hampton Court in London; rare others that she was with him at Enfield Manor to the north of London.

But what are the facts?

Finding facts takes time and can often change the narrative.

The first hard fact I dug up was in Documents Relating to the Revels at Court (https://archive.org/details/documentsrelatin00greauoft/).

This document can be found in full on Internet Archive — https://archive.org/details/documentsrelatin00greauoft/. (Bowing in reverent gratitude to the Research Gods.)

This snip indicates that masks and stage sets had been taken to Hampton Court for Christmas of 1547/8.

Thus, for a time, I assumed that the Christmas Revels took place at Hampton Court in London. I wasn’t happy about that. If Christmas was at Hampton Court, Elizabeth’s stepmother and her new husband Thomas Seymour would have been staying at Thomas’s London manor, Seymour Place, a hop-skip-and-a-jump from Hampton Court. With the essential members of the cast spread out, the drama weakened. It became a significantly different story.

But then I happily found a reference to Christmas at Enfield in Ecclesiastical Memorials (Vol. II, part 1).

Although Ecclesiastical Memorials isn’t known for always being accurate, I was swayed, yet uneasily so.

But now — tah da! — I have found hard evidence that nails down Enfield as the site of the drama. In “Seven rediscovered letters of Princess Elizabeth Tudor” by Evans and Bryson is a letter Elizabeth wrote dated December 30, 1547 — from Enfield. (https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/en/publications/seven-rediscovered-letters-of-princess-elizabeth-tudor)

So why the change of venue?

Why the change from hosting Christmas at Hampton Court to Enfield? My theory is that plague breakouts in London that November necessitated a change to a place further out of town. And now I have the fun of adding to the drama of the scene yeomen hefting stage sets and costumes from Hatfield House in London to rural Enfield in an exceptionally bitter winter (also a fact).

The beauty of footnotes …

A footnote in the Evans and Bryson article gives the delicious detail that Elizabeth’s 1548 New Year’s gift to her little brother King Edward VI was a translation of Bernardino Ochino’s ‘Che cosa è Christo’, which she dated 30 Dec. 1547, also from Enfield.

There is an additional telling detail in the footnotes that may well help solve yet another mystery — but that will have to wait for my next missive.

For now, happy Sunday evening. I’m signing off with a Celebration of Summer photo I took earlier today, “Peony on a Japanese Plate.”

I was officially (if faintly) positive.

Groan! I longed to get out of Covid jail!

That happened today, on Day 12: I finally tested negative.

Going out was a Very Big Deal. Of course I went masked, to be extra sure. I’m not “officially” negative until I confirm that result in two days. (I describe myself to my kids as "#bythebookMom.)

Plus, I have such pretty masks.

(I have more of these masks in even more colours back in Canada. My son-in-law Bruce likes to ask people, “How has the Pandemic made you weird?” An excellent question. The answer, for me, it’s that that I’ve found things offered in a range of colours irresistible.)

So: did I discover a wonderful world out there?

Not exactly. I squandered this beautiful day in the seemingly meaningless pursuit of figuring out how to persuade gmail to “authenticate” me.

Gmail! Really?

Yet let’s not forget that early on there was a charming Good-Day moment going to pick up my laundry — not something one can do while in covid jail. On the way back I lingered (in the doorway, by-the-book masked) to chat with good friends and neighbours, Wayne Grady and Merilyn rhymes-with-diamonds-Simonds, enjoying a treat in the little French bakery.

Such encounters will be my new life, for across the street from the dangerously-delicious French bakery is my winter home to be.

This video shows what I love about my future ‘hood, caught from the rooftop of my (former) covid jail. (The — to be fair — delightful room rental on the rooftop of the studio of the amazing artist Lena Bartula.) It’s a rare live-band moment, but it captures this neighbourhood vibe. My future Casa Azul is just around the corner. :-)

A friend had not been answering calls ... or the door ... or emails. A mutual friend called me, hoping I might know someone who had a key to her house. I didn't, but I began to call and email people who might. As many in town were doing.

Of course my Contacts app crashed and my computer had a melt-down. Plus, I couldn't email gmail addresses unless I used an old gmail address of my own, but when people responded they were informed that I wasn’t checking emails.

This is how things go in a life-or-death emergency: slowly, and with total dysfunction.

Shortly after 1:00 we learned that Reesha had been found dead in her home.

Heartbreak.

Reesha was in her 80s. She had a radiant face, a ready wit, and was, as my daughter Carrie put it, "the pinnacle of salty senior style."

She was one of the reasons Richard and I moved to San Miguel de Allende over twenty years ago. She and friends Rick and Merilyn formed The Literary Cabaret, a threesome performing a show of literary readings, music and song. A bit of bawdy humour, a bit of profound wisdom, and all of it entertaining. I became a groupie.

Reesha’s health had been declining and she’d made hints of late that she was "ready." That's consoling, now, but we’re not ready to be deprived of the pleasure of her company.

Rest in peace, dear one.

(Reesha with Milo. Photo thanks to Kathy Snodgrass.)

Please, do this: If you live alone, make sure some people have a key to your home and that others know who they are and how to contact them.

Day 9: Still testing positive.

As a writer, isolation suits me — no?

Yes, and no. I’ve discovered that there is a difference between voluntary isolation for creative purposes and the isolation that comes of being The Leper in the Attic.

This is Day 8 since I first tested, and the lines on the daily Rapid Test have been getting fainter and fainter. I’m told that this is a good sign. Will today be the day I test negative? I’m not a religious person, but hope can be reverent in its longing.

I put on my reading glasses to read the fine-print instructions, for this is a new box, my third “product,” and every make is slightly different. My first, the rapid tests given out in Ontario, Canada, were hard on the nose, insisting on deep entry of the dreaded swab. My second, generously given to me by the artist whose room I’m renting, were a US product, which specified that there was no need for deep penetration. (Say hey!) Now I have a third, manufactured in China but sold in Mexico, and the instructions are tiny and in Spanish. It’s a language I failed in High School, and now, over a half-centry later at the august age of 78, I can only sort of muddle through. Especially the new (to me) vocabulary on a Chinese Rapid Covid Test sold in Mexico.

Fortunately, there is an illustration, which, unfortunately, demonstrates a deep entry of the dreaded swab, called tampón, which evokes images of another stage of life, a stage long past me. There are no specifications for how long the tampón is to be inserted, whether in one nostril or two, or how many times it is to be twirled.

But I am, by this Day 8, well trained in both Canadian and US methods, and proceed, twirling, counting the 15 seconds in each nostril — or, rather, twirling until a violent, teary sneeze forces ejection. I sit the tampón in the tube (a nicely made one, I note, with an attached top), squeeze, twirl, repeat, wait a bit, and then ready myself reverently for The Moment.

On the 3rd drop into the muestra del dispositivo (Google translate: device sample), I see the dreaded red stain rising. I don’t have to wait the 10 to 20 minutes to understand the verdict. Indeed, it is instantly clear: I have covid. Still.

And the two lines on the muestra del dispositivo are not the least bit faint.

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