Win Some, Lose Some

Now, I love my little old house, but I am not a big fan of the tan that was used as the main paint colour. The chance to paint a small part of this place a different colour held great appeal to me. So, I bought it. 

 I've had little luck in finding full time work, but a few leads have emerged. Nothing concrete yet, but do keep your fingers crossed.In the meantime, I have been keeping busy. For all the years I have owned my little house that nearing a century old, I have never really had it all to myself. I am taking this chance to pull apart the house and reorganize. It's been a lot of work, especially since I lost a close friend in April and a lot of her stuff has come to stay with me.

I had not expected what came next in the organization project.

As I walked through the hardware store looking for something niche and specific (that I did not find), I saw that there was a low VOC paint on for a really good sale. Paint that would be perfect for a bathroom. 

Tonight, I pulled everything out of the main bath and painted the bathroom.

Everything went fairly smoothly. I love the new colour. I am happy with my choice. It was what happened after that didn't go so well. See, I had to move everything from the bathroom to the kitchen. It was late when I finished painting. I needed to feed the girls (and myself as I'd only had two granola bars since the morning). I had to move a few things around to access my fridge.

And that is when disaster hit.

I managed to destabilize the carefully placed items that I had moved from the bathroom to the kitchen. The cabinet organizer for behind the toilet was the first to topple. The leg broke right off as it crashed to the ground. In move of retrospective idiocy, I tried to grab for it. It is not a light thing and there was no reasonable way for me to break the fall from where I stood.

However, I managed to send the closet door tumbling over. 

The door came crashing down hitting the counter... and my coffee pot. Glass and the cold remnants of this mornings coffee exploded all over my kitchen. Cue an epic meltdown of overwhelm.

I am hoping a metric shit tonne of wood glue will help repair the storage thing, but the coffee pot was a total loss. However, my sister called me that evening and I told her about my day. Her response was "Well, I guess I know what I am getting you for Christmas now."

At which point, after much laughter (which I needed), she bought me a fancy new coffee machine that I need to drive to the city to pick up tomorrow. 

You win some, you lose some. In the end, it all works out in the wash.

Edited to add: After posting this and despite my careful cleaning of the kitchen to prevent any one of my furbabies from stepping on glass, I managed to step on a piece of glass... Go me.

So, I got fired

I don't post much about my day job but as you can tell from the title of this post, this is kind of a big thing. After almost 15 years at the same job, I was fired just the other week. My brain cannot really decide how to feel about all of this. 

Over the last few years, my ability to live the creative life I wanted to had been drowned out by the exhaustion and the burnout my day job was causing me. The mental stress induced from a non-supportive environment and excessive hours did a real number on both my physical and mental health. 

So, in some ways, it's not bad thing that I am not working there anymore, but not working in general is very anxiety inducing. I have a positive attitude about it all, but I am not sure if that attitude stems from true belief that I will land on my feet or if it is a habit stemming for a lifetime of not wanting to let others worry about me or something else entirely. 

I can honestly say that I do tend to land on my feet, but I really want to find a way to not return to the day job life. However, I am not a prolific or popular enough writer to make my living that way. I am no great social media guru to find my way as an influencer. My freelance work is entirely sporadic.

I honestly am not sure what I am going to do next. I am still applying for regular jobs and hoping that it all works out.

I am sure that somehow, it will work out. Maybe not the way I would necessarily want it to, but the way it has to. 

Staying positive isn't a terrible thing when it doesn't fall into the realm of toxic positivity, but I cannot ignore the anxiety that resides with me as I look forward to the unknown. 

I am staring into the void of the future and, so far, it has stared back in unknowing silence.

Omg, I forgot one of my WIPs

 Okay, first off, go read the previous post first and now I will add that I forgot to include one of the works in progress that is actually high on my list of things I want to get finished!

Several years ago I published a short story as a part of an anthology. The story was titled "A Peccadillo
Problem" and the shared world was a series of stories based on Alice in Wonderland. The anthology did not sell that well and went out of print at the end of 2023.

I was just fine with this anthology going out of print because I was already in the process of taking this story and making it something much more. I was never really happy with the story I had written. I knew there was more potential than what was published.

If you're a writer, you probably know exactly what I mean by that.

Now, when I say I was making it something more, I mean I was entirely revamping everything from the characters to the plot line. If you did read the original story from this anthology, you may find yourself recognizing certain events and scenes. I salvaged a lot of what I had including some of the characters, but then I made it something so much more. 

 This story is a few chapters away from being a finished first draft of a novella with a brand new title. It will also be moving a bit more towards the darker writing that fans of my work expect from me. I will hint a bit about what to expect in this novella with the title and tagline. As an added bonus, you're going to get a sneak peak of the new cover.

Title: Not Alice

Tagline: Alice is perfect. Smart, athletic, kind—everyone loved her. Then, one day, Alice disappeared without a trace. This isn’t her story.

Yes, I'm Still Alive

 I even updated the website a bit. Exciting, right?

Okay. Not really, but it is what it is. 

However, I just finished taking part in one of my favorite conferences for creatives, Flights of Foundry. Every year since I discovered this incredible and accessible event, I've made a point of taking part. This year, it wasn't just taking part in an event (as both a panelist and a participant), but a reaffirmation of how much life creative work fills me with.

Not only did I start a few new pieces of short work, but it reminded me of the novels in progress that I want to desperately get back to. 

If you're wondering what is on the list of things I wish to complete in the near future, well that shouldn't be too hard for me to tell you about. 

Most importantly, I would love to finish the final edits 'Rising Darkness', the sequel to 'Falling Light', and second book of the 'The Shadows of Fate' trilogy. This book has been sitting at the final revision stage for far too long.

The third book in the series, 'Penumbra', is still in the first draft stage, but I do want get that out. There are a few sticky plot points I am still working through, I am sure that those who have read and loved the first book, want me to finish the story of these wonderful characters. 

And yes, when all is send and done, I promise as happy an ending for those "goobers" (as one fan refers to them) as I am capable of writing.

Beyond that, I had a chance to talk about and really think about my other works in progress and I am not sure how much I have talked about them on my blog or outside of my writing groups. So, I thought I would write about them here and tell you why I am so excited to be able to work on each of these stories.

One of things that I really want to do is finish the second edition edits for the re-release of my novel 'Feathers & Fae', I even have a new concept cover for it. I have no plans to change the plot structure of this story, but I very much want to elevate this story to where I always wanted it to be. 

After that, I want to finish a story that I started years ago based on the joking challenge of how many times can I kill a main character in a story. In line with the tone of the story, it is called "Where the Dead Fern Goes'. The cover shown here is not the final cover, but something I created for fun. It has a snarky main character, Fern, who is death's assassin, killing those who are responsible for creating one too many traumatized souls. When her most recent investigation brings back memories that should have been erased, she risks losing herself and becoming an untethered, vengeful spirit.

One of the panels I attended at the conference reminded me of why representation is important. It brings me to a novel I have been longing to write for a while now, but haven't had a chance to get to that has an aro/ace main character. The tentative title of the story is 'Ace of Hearts' and this is the rough synopsis "Sam comes from a long line of demon hunters and has always been expected to learn the family business. When her entire family is brutally murdered, Sam learns that other families of hunters have been completed eliminated as well. Determined to get revenge, her investigation points to a cult of incubi and succubae. What she didn't expect was one incubus who wants to help her, or the friendship that develops between them."

Lower on the list, but still stories I really want to get to is finishing the sapphic, gothic horror novel, 'The Curse of Oakwood Manor' that is about halfway through the first draft. I do want to keep working on the next two novels in the 'Saints & Sinners' series with a couple of chapters of the next novel, 'Shards of Shadows' having been written. Though, with the first two books being my earliest published novels, I would love to be able revise the first two books 'Depths of Darkness' and 'Road to Redemption' up to my current standards.

There is also a book that I wrote years ago that I have never gotten out of my head. I loved the rich and detailed character. It was a fun imaging on the sword and sorcery genre with richly developed characters. It is called 'Blessings of the Damned' which is about an immortal sorcerer hiding from the
demons of his past under an assumed name in a quiet village. When an exiled queen discovers his true identity, she kidnaps his adopted niece to force him to help her break the curse his brother placed on her land. Unfortunately, this means facing the one person he never wanted to see again as the set out on a journey that can only end in death.

There is one last novel I want to talk about. This one started as a planned series of novellas of which the first was originally published in a short lived anthology that was published by Kyanite, one of the last things before they put out before they closed. The story was titled 'Call of the Void'. With the other stories in the series planned out, I wasn't going to let that work go to waste. The entire series will be under the novel name 'A Kingdom of Broken of Shadows'.  The other four parts of this are titled, 'Weight of the Throne', 'Curse of the Crown', 'Blood of the Ghost', and 'Heart of the Darkness'.