It’s been awhile.

Far too long really.

Over two years if you want to get nitty gritty about it.

I didn’t mean for that to happen. I really didn’t. It just kinda did. One day we were moving out of our first apartment here in Washington to the next, far superior, one. Then Halloween happened, then my cousin came to visit, then it was Thanksgiving, and Christmas and my in laws were here for a visit. There we somehow managed to buy a house, got the Boyo started in a new school, deal with problematic neighbors, and suddenly it was the Holiday season yet again.

Then Covid hit.

Like everything else in the world, our lives kinda went sideways between virtual schooling the Boyo, furloughs, and home projects. In addition to all that, I had just started classes to get my real estate license the month before shut down and suddenly I was watching my whole career fall around me before it had even truly began. Because with our economy falling into recession yet again, what else was going to happen?

To my complete and utter surprise, Real Estate didn’t fall and crash like it did in the mid 2000s – it stayed strong. In fact it’s been roaring along with no stop, and as soon as I got my license, I hit the ground running with three clients. I just got one under contract on a home a little ways down the road from us, and now I’m working on getting the other two into places they will love. I also have another client who’s looking to sell their home in the next couple of months.

It’s been crazy.

So, with all that going on, you’re probably wondering what’s been happening on the writer side of life?

Not as much as I would like, honestly. I’m still trying to find a balance between Boyo’s virtual school, housework, hobbies, and my new career. Some days are better than others. More often than not, the end of the day will find me sprawled out on the couch with my nose in my phone watching a never ending stream of Tik Tok videos while something true crime related plays on the TV in the background.

I did release Elusion, finally. It was a year behind schedule, but it’s now available for consumption by the masses. I still have two more books to write in that series, but I do not know if I will ever get around to them since finishing Elusion was such a slog.

I finished a fanfic that I’ve been working on since I was a teenager. I’m not entirely happy with it though, so I may wait awhile and then try to tighten it up. But I also may just leave it alone because I feel so bad that it took so long to finish.

I started plugging away at Temple of Fire, which is the first book in the Descendants. You can see snippets of here and there on the blog, but it’s changed a bit between then and now. The beginning is very rough because the heroine isn’t exactly likeable at first, but she does grow and mature as the story goes on. I may end up changing the title of the story though, because I realized a couple of days ago that Temple of Fire doesn’t really fit since they never actually encounter it. City of Ashes is far more appropriate given the setting.

I joined the beta of Sequel, a new website that’s sort of like a cross between Patreon and Wattpad/Inkitt, and I’ve been sharing it there. I then go and post the chapters on Inkitt and Wattpad a couple of weeks later. I haven’t gotten as much interest as I thought I would, but I suspect that’s because it’s a bit of a niche idea plus it does take a few chapters to really get going.

And that’s really all the news that’s fit to print. I’m hoping that I can get back into the swing of posting more regularly but I’m not sure if WIPpet Wednesday or any of the other blog circles I used to follow are still going… so we’ll see!