xakara

I was not ignoring anyone, I swear!

Our internet was out for a time and there were no email notifications when I got back online to let me know there were messages waiting for me here.

As many of you already know, for sanity's sake, I'd stepped back from the blogs and such and narrowed myself to email and one or two communities while trying to figure out some serious life altering issues in my private life. I'm still figuring a few of those things out, but it seems the overall situation is turning a corner.

For those still talking to me, those willing to start over with a clean slate, and those who just remember who I am and are interested, this is where things stand.

Writing: BloodSprite has a final edit and submission this fall/winter. There are three options and I'm going with my emotions on one rather than common sense at this point, so we'll see where it all ends up.

BloodQueen will be ready for beta reads in December and the first half of BloodThrone or BloodShift should be ready depending on where the half of BloodQueen I ripped out ends up.

The Forgiven will be ready for beta input in January. It'll be rough, but I stick by the redo. It was easy to keep track of everyone in my head but I needed to par down the story and make it relatable for those not blessed/burdened with the way my mind works. I still see it as a trilogy but I'm going to embrace the opportunity to do a novella in the world with the characters, I just need to make a final decision on where it falls in the timeline.

I started the Eternals series....I don't know how I feel about that. It pulled me in with such a force that it stole my breath and sped up my heart and captured my thoughts with all the pull of falling in love. But I know there's darkness and loss and misunderstanding and a great deal of nostalgia down that path too. It's going to take a while to sort out everything I feel about it, but it was time and so I'm going for it.

A few of us have discussed the character blog idea and the more I mull it over the more I'm beginning to take to the idea of doing one instead of an ongoing 3rd person story for the newsletter next year. My biggest pause is who gets to do the blog? Most were speaking of Dante but until BloodSprite comes out there's no way to know if Dante will have the kind of following that makes the blog the best idea. Eldan from The Forgiven is an option, but only if I do the novella and it gets picked up for the anthology.....I'll sort it and keep taking beta input and we'll see. I suppose if I can get anyone in my head to blog regularly it's a win.

And speaking of regular writing of any kind, lets move onto a writing-related personal change.

Meds: After more than two decades of insomnia, SEVERE insomnia, and I'm finally going to break down and agree to medication. If I can sleep, I can write regularly and I won't fall off the planet under prolonged stress since I'll actually be able to rest during a crisis rather than be up for 30 or more hours at a time. I have to wait for my insurance to kick in, and with me being me, I'm going to do everything I can to get as much sleep and rest as I can so that I can be on the lowest dose of whatever I agree to as possible. Yeah, I didn't say I would be an enthusiastic patient, just that I agree to be a patient at all.

Health: After a full physical (wow, being insured is nifty) I'm on a hardcore health kick. Depending on what the doctor(s) say we'll start trying for a baby February of 2011. Why not February of 2010? Because we're moving again.

Moving: It's not 100% settled but it appears that if everything goes well we'll be in Seattle next August. We'll have permanent custody of my nephew by the end of the month and he has family in Seattle including a younger brother that misses him terribly. We've been invited by his former step-mom whose also a personal friend, to come visit in the spring and then come out and spend the summer as part of getting settled so we'll have 8 to 12 weeks to fully acclimate and decide if it's for the long haul.

Finances: We're building our savings in preperation for the move, but that's more of a short term view. Long term includes investing in Wellness Counseling certification along with ASL classes through my job at Relay to consider Video Interpreter positions down the line. Both are things I can do from home with a child and schedule during a specific time of day to leave time for writing. I'll need to get as much finished, polished, submitted and contracted as possible over the next year, it's not just about generating passive income (always great) but I lost a year with the last move for various reasons. I can't do that again. I need to build enough momentum that my writing routine can survive living out of boxes for months and learning a brand new city (a stickier situation for someone who has a phobia about getting lost to the point of having nightmares, but I'm up to it again).

Misc.: Blogging, email, forums and other communications. I've worked to keep a hold of at least one of these at any given time rather than drift away from everything during stress, depression, or hectic schedules, but I want more of them in my life. I tend toward darker things the more I'm able to isolate myself, which since the desire to isolate comes from an already dark time, it doesn't make sense to let it get darker. (Of course if the things we did during stress made sense we wouldn't consider ourselves stressed, just mildly put out).

So those are the highlights of the process without the pity party of the details along the way. Yes, there are some things some of us have talked about that aren't mentioned here. Let's just say as much as got ironed out there are still wrinkles to be worked with. But here's the public apology and explanation for those who didn't get email versions thereof.

Am I back on LJ for good? No idea, it's part of the plan, but there's a lot to the whole plan and still only 24 hours in a day (when are they going to do something about that?). But weekly updates should be a good place to start and we'll build on that.

I'm so far behind on my flist that I don't know that I could catch up, but at least I can begin to keep up.

Hugs...

~X

"What's Been Going On Ramble" Done