Fall Update

Happy Fall, everyone! I hope you’re all staying comfortable and enjoying the season. We’ve been busy working over some of our fields in an attempt to clear out lots of nasty old greasewood and creosote brush so that we can plant wheat. Long story short – hard soil bad. Tractors good.

I’ve continued to work on what was supposed to be the final revision of Nethbane, but the more I dig into this, the more disgusted and disappointed I am with how sloppy some of it feels. I put a lot of time and effort into this book when originally drafting and revising it (a LOT) and to read through it now and think that I only wrote this about six years ago, I’ve begun reworking it in the same fashion that Wings of Fate was subjected to – IE, a complete re-write.

The core of everything will stay the same (with a few extra things) but I have no choice but to overhaul Nethbane before getting it back into print. I am a perfectionist by nature, and I will accept nothing but the best quality that I am capable of at any given time. This means that the revision may take longer than I’d first anticipated, but whatever. At least it will feel better to me, and hopefully flow better for readers.

Still no sign of my large writing binder or its companion notebook, unfortunately. And now my main sketchbook has gone missing, as well. I’ve not seen any of them in months and the only thing I can think is that I put all three of them somewhere very safe while moving – so safe, of course that I can’t locate them. I’ll continue to search, but if I can’t find them within the next little while here, I may just break down and rework some things in the outline for Taloner: Wekthusia so that I can at least finish the first draft. I really was hoping to have this book ready for print some time next year, and I’m not giving up on that goal. Of course, that leaves the matter of getting myself back into digital art, which I’ve not really done for about three years, but it has to happen at some point.

In other news, I’m still exhausted day and night, but by this point I’ve realized that this will never go away and I’ve begun to adjust mentally. It does create more frustration with trying to write and hold onto all sorts of different little details, but I guess that’s why I have a bunch of blank notebooks hoarded (and a plethora of digital notes) Time to fill everything up with work!

Being in a constant state of utter exhaustion also means art will be sparser (not like you didn’t notice that already, right?) But I am hoping to do a little art here and there, instead of lots of nothing.

PS - Is there a character or creature from Legends of Destiny that you would like to see drawn? Feel free to mention it in the comments!

What Once Was Lost...

Hello again, dear readers. Happy news: For the first time in more than five years, I have internet at home.

And, some not-so-happy news: I cannot locate the large binder (or its companion notebook) in which I have recorded a very significant amount of notes for my writing. Both have to be somewhere amongst the things that have been packed up for moving, but after scouring multiple places that these notebooks could and should be, I still cannot locate either of them. I am at a point in the manuscript of Taloner: Wekthusia where I cannot continue forward without being able to consult my notes for vital bits of information I have there, and I am unwilling to plow blindly ahead and create a large mess to come back and clean up later on. So, after much consideration and no small amount of regret, I am forced to take a temporary break from working on the manuscript. With luck, I will be able to find at least the binder or the notebook within the next little while. Once I do, work will resume. This is really the only problem with condensing so much of your thoughts, notes, and work into one central point.

This is really frustrating for me because the past several months have been full of progress, and this is the most productive I've felt with my writing since revising and re-releasing Wings of Fate. Waiting is not something I enjoy doing.

However, I've also come to the decision that while I am attempting to locate my lost notes, I will begin working on another project that has been weighing on my mind quite heavily for the last while; the final revision for Nethbane is overdue, and I will be applying myself to this project in the meantime. There are a couple of new chapters that need to be written and inserted, as well as something being modified near the end of the book.

While my large binder and notebook are missing, I did manage to unearth a single page of very important notes that I had lost while working on the original draft of Nethbane's manuscript. The last sixth or so of the book never did feel quite right to me, and I knew I was missing something, but I couldn't remember what. It was a relief to find this lonely little scrap of paper, which is now being kept in a safe place.

I think that's enough of an update here, for now. If you'll excuse me, I have a little over 215,000 words I need to read through and polish.

Resurfacing

Posting an update here to assure everyone that yes, I'm still alive. It wasn't intentional to have time lapse so long between updates, but I have been dealing with heavy Post Partum Depression since having my son. I went back and forth for a while on whether or not to really say anything here, but this blog has always been intended as a place where I can speak candidly about everything affecting the creative parts of my life, and that includes the obstacles that occasionally come out of nowhere and overwhelm me like a tidal wave.

I'm someone who's no stranger to depression, as I've had it all my life, but the past couple of years have been especially hard. It's only very recently that I've finally begun to resurface from what feels like a bottomless, dark lake that smothers everything else in life. And it's taken its toll - I have gotten absolutely no writing done for the past three months. This, on top of the extremely sparse work I was able to do during my pregnancy and for several months after the arrival of my son, has left me feeling somewhat of a sense of urgency to continue my work as a writer. I'm not sure yet whether that urgency is stemming from the load of work I've set up for myself to complete, or if it's the herald of some new challenge that is coming my direction. Either way, I have resolved to attack my hefty project list and do as much as I can before I either burn out again or some large and new hurdle appears on my path - whichever happens first, I guess.

So, obviously I'm not going to be able to pursue the Spring release for Taloner: Wekthusia that I was hoping for, but crap happens. I am back at work on the manuscript and have selected which projects I will be working on once T:W is written, revised, and in print. I'm really looking forward to knocking projects down one at a time and getting more books written and revised and back into the hands of readers.

And as an aside, I am in the laboriously slow process of helping my husband to fix up two houses and move from one to the other. I am also still a resident of No Internet Land, and now a resident of Poor Signal Land, as well. So updates here may continue to be far and few between for a little while.

Wishing you all well. Here goes nothin'.