We’re a year into the pandemic here.

I’ve been having an increasing number of health issues and I’ve had to finally really face that. Chronic pain for about eighteen months, but in my head it was like “Oh, it’s maybe two or three times a day?” (That’s how it was in the beginning.) I started charting it, however, and found that was more like nine to ten times a day–just sudden acute pain (that occurs chronically, hence me referring to it as “chronic pain”) I can’t predict and can’t treat other than waiting out it while it interrupts my day. So the question was whether this is problems with existing damage my body suffered several years ago when I first got sick, or if it’s new damage and I’m no longer in remission.

It’s not exactly a great time to go through all the bullshit of doctors and multiple appointments, so I spent some time researching and charting symptoms. I’m pretty sure it’s the former–existing damage being exasperated by various things. With sufficient changes, in just a few days I’ve cut the pain down about 40%-50% what it’s been recently. Long term, though?

Stress. It’s always stress.

It’s been converging on all fronts pretty much–personal and professional (counting writing as professional). I even hit a point last week where all I wanted to do was just close up shop here because I’m so goddamn tired. Tired of having to hustle constantly, tired of feeling like I’m just treading water, tired of daily having to combat theft (especially when I’m unwell). Tired, even, of having faith that anything will ever improve.

Rationally, I know that as much as a slog as it’s been, I am in a better position. As of writing this, I am one patron away from fifty–50!–which is staggering to me. That is a tremendous achievement and is directly responsible for me being able to continue writing when sales are so hit and miss. I realize there is a very slow but consistent increase in writing income overall as the years have passed, even though none of it comes close to covering even a fraction of the time spent on it. But even then, the work I do also consistently has become something I feel like I do for other people. My books are bigger, more complex, and take more time, and every step of the way I feel like I owe them to others rather than myself (because that’s been all I have time for).

Writing requires closing a door to everything else while you work, and that’s something I think every writer has to relearn how to do again and again. It’s been a long time since I’ve had that door closed; right now it feels like it’s constantly open, a sea of voices drowning out everything else.

So I’ve spent the last few days trying to regain that silence. Seems a weird thing, entering year two of isolation due to a pandemic–and I have been truly isolated, no physical contact, nothing but essential visits out–to be looking for even more isolation. But I’ve always done best when things are…quiet. That’s how I grew up, how I first created stories. Experimenting with silence over the past few days has been successful.

It definitely helps.

I’d been hoping to take a full week off of freelance work at some point this month–and still might, when I get enough projects sent off–but maybe giving myself some silence this month will help as well. Limited social activity–I’ve been on a Twitter break for a few days. Limited email–just talking to clients and delivering projects. I still have a DnD game once a week to catch up with people, but that’s about all the humanning I’ve got energy for.

I’ve also got a small, inexpensive treadmill–a year too late, considering the pandemic, but this was when I could afford it–to make up for some of the physical activity I’ve lacked in the past year. That lack of movement also contributes to these health issues, and I’m starting small with just a mile in the morning and a mile in the evening, but that’s making a difference to.

So that’s where I am, why I’m quiet–it’s not a depressive episode, I’m fine, I’m just under a lot of stress and trying to pare back the voices in my head to focus on the fictional ones again.

As always, reader support is greatly appreciated. Yampellec’s Idol is off for copyedits and that’s still set for June 1. The Silent Places is on sale for $2.99 at Kobo for International Women’s Day, as is Solomon’s Seal (for 99c). More is on the way! And I will be back to full form in a short while.

Guess who turns two years old today!

On February 15 2019, while I’d been under the weather for some weeks, I headed out in the cold that evening to see a pair of two-day-old kittens.

Their mother, a barn cat, had been killed by a predator the day before. A third kitten had died of hypothermia when some kind people can to rescue them. They got them through that first day of being orphaned, but feeding every two hours was a lot for a high school student. It was a Friday night and I’d intended to get them through the weekend and then contact a local shelter on Monday in case they had a nursing mother.

I didn’t think they’d last the weekend, they were so tiny–very low birthweight with some characteristics to suggest they could’ve been a few days premature. And little Gus very nearly didn’t get through those first twenty-four hours–while I fought to get him to feed, I did not know that whole time he had a congenital heart defect that would not let him live past eight weeks.

But he turned a corner. And they both survived. And once we got in a rhythm with both feeding well, I knew trying to move them again to another foster situation, even with a mother cat, would put their progress at risk.

So I kept them.

They were always my boys. Something in my gut told me that before I even saw them–the moment I heard there were these kittens, I had to see them, had to help them. They were mine. Even entertaining adoption possibilities while they were young, I couldn’t bear the thought of giving them up. When we lost Gus, there was no question Shawn couldn’t go anywhere.

We’re here, two years later. Shawn is accident prone and constantly in trouble. He’s simultaneously elegant and a total goof. I am never not in sight of him, as much as he tries to be an independent cat. He’s the little prince who rules over everything but still hides behind me when there’s a loud noise or a stranger at the door.

I am so grateful to have this little ball of chaos in my life.

He got several presents from me and from his auntie in Alabama, and has been enthralled with the toys all morning. Soon the cats will get some KMR as a treat, and he’s got new beds and climbers to rest on.

Every day I sing him “Future Days”–sometimes just a few lines or the chorus, but other times the whole of the song. To get the kittens to settle after mealtimes, even when they were just two days old, I’d hold them against my chest and sing–every damn time–as the vibrations likely seemed like purring to them. He likes songs and usually won’t settle at night until he gets one. Now he even recognizes it as “his” song–last year when I was playing The Last of Us Part II, there’s a point where Ellie (at the theatre) sings the first line. When Shawn heard it, his head bopped up and he went straight to the TV to watch in fascination.

So I leave you with the Joel version of Shawnie’s song, and the hope that we have many more future days to come.

…and what have you done? 🎵 🎵 🎵

This was a rather unprecedented year for fuckery and I am…sort of pleasantly surprised at what I actually got done?

There were a lot of jokes early lockdown about “Now’s the time to write that novel!” and then of course no one actually got anything done because it’s hard to focus on art during such a period of instability (unless your brain was wired for it). And while I largely felt like I did very little…it turns out that is not the case.

So this will serve as my end-of-year recap and (likely) last post of the year (omg YEAR).

Counterpoint: Always Kill a Boy on the First Date

A post-Oblivion novella that serialized last year on Patreon and released January 28 2020 everywhere else. I was writing it concurrently with Blood Ties, but I didn’t initially know the two would tie together; I kept feeling like I was missing something toward the end of both of them, and then suddenly I put two and two together and realized how they fit. I think both stand alone fine on their own, but I hope some readers of this one had a “Aha!” moment when they got to the third part of Blood Ties.

That brings us to…

Blood Ties

The zero of this one finished in January and serialized on Patreon, then released June 2 2020 in ebook and paperback.

I didn’t advertise it as a spinoff to not scare off new readers, which may or may not have been a mistake, I don’t know; I do think it stands alone fine but is much richer when you have the full history. I’d always known Elisabeta’s birth was in the cards (although I didn’t get to write it with the premature ending of the main series) but I had no idea she was going to be a serial killer until she started talking to me.

It has not done well enough to justify continuing the series, unfortunately. I’ve started Witch Hunt, and when it’s done next year it’ll serialize on Patreon and then release in paperback, but piracy was super high with this one and not enough sales to compensate. I had at least three more planned after that (Hell Fire, Soul Spell, Demon Fall) but that’s on hold right now.

A new series with a pansexual serial killer main character was definitely a risk and one I don’t regret taking–readers who bought it tended to love it, and even if I don’t get to do all the things I was planning with it, I’m very glad to have at least some of Elis’s story out there.

And my last big public release of the year…

The Silent Places

I started The Silent Places early in the year and wrote it in chunks at a time before finishing and revising it during my birthday holiday in September. It went through several rounds of revisions and edits and released December 8 2020.

I had absolutely no idea where this one would go with readers. And I still don’t really know–it’s early yet (a week since release). But the handful of people who’ve read it and reached out have loved it, and it’s the kind of deeply personal book I hope hits the right readers when they need it most. There was a lot I wanted to say about survivors, trauma, and the broken system that fails victims, and I feel like I’ve at least done that as well as I possibly can–which is is the most I can really do. (And it has a cover quote from LILITH-FREAKING-SAINTCROW so omg about that still.)

Thus far it’s done okay–it had more preorders than the next Livi Talbot novel (so far) and it’s sold better in a week than Blood Ties did in six months, at least. Which is not enough to live on but it’s promising nonetheless, and I’m hopeful that’ll bode well for the next domestic thriller currently simmering in my brain.

With releases out of the way, what writing did I actually finish?

• Blood Ties–I finished it in January so I’m counting it
• Yampellec’s Idol–aka Livi #5. The stars did not align to get it out by the end of the year, but I got the zero draft done by May (and wrote about 80K to top off what I’d already written last year), the first round of revision done, and I’m hoping to finish the next big round by the end of the year. It’s currently up for preorder.
• The Silent Places–started and finished this year.
• Asset’s Protocol–a West-POV short story specifically for patrons.
• My Heart With You–a long West-POV story briefly released at Patreon (contains a lot of spoilers for the future of the series)

Then I have a list of projects started. The two I’ll mention:

• Witch Hunt–Elis O’Connor #2. I had to take a break when the piracy hit but I’m a few chapters into it and it’ll likely shift to my priority in the near year when I’m through Livi #5’s revisions.
• Season of the Bitch–Elis O’Connor #0.5. It was supposed to be a fun Halloween short story for Patreon but of course it’s going to be longer than that. Several chapters have posted and it’ll conclude either this month or next.

I’ve other things in progress I’ll talk about more when they’re closer to completion, but I’ve gotten substantial work done on other books as well.

In such a messed up year–in which I broke my fucking foot and didn’t go to the ER “because pandemic”–I feel super grateful to have accomplished what I have, to get a few new stories out there against enormous odds, and to mostly keep my sanity throughout. I am incredibly grateful to all the readers, returning and new, who’ve invested in my existing series and embraced the new standalone thriller. I am, as always, stunned and humbled by my Patreon supporters, who’ve managed to stick with me during a goddamn global pandemic when things are so difficult for so many–they’re why the Livi Talbot series has continued, no question.

If you bought a book this year, got it from the library, told a friend, wrote a review–thank you, thank you, thank you.

The holiday plans are pretty low-key here; I’ve been in isolation since March and that’ll likely continue until late next year when I’m eligible for a vaccine. And even then, I think I’ll probably stay the fuck away from most people because humans are gross and I enjoy not having contact with the majority of them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s better than last year’s last-minute struggle to put together some kind of Christmas, which was not a fun time to be sure; this year I already have the tree up (which Shawn is determined to topple, god help me) and all my plans are quiet and relaxing. Shoutout to my close friend Danni–she of Blood Ties and Damaged dedications (I wrote both books for her)–who is determined I not miss out despite being alone here. She’s singlehandedly ordered a massive Christmas dinner currently chilling in my freezer and cupboard, and delivered a stack of wrapped gifts for me and the cats (that yes, I’ve had to hide from Shawn). Themes of found family permeate my books, and she is an example of why; I know the very best people, and very rarely are they related by blood.

If you’re able to gather with people in your household this year, you’re very lucky. Please don’t forget those in your life who’ve possibly had no physical contact with other humans since March–it’s been a very long road for many who have been trying to do their part to not spread a deadly virus to the vulnerable, and it’s not going to be over any time soon. Reaching out with Zoom-type holiday greetings in lieu of parties, bringing by a plate of food or dropping takeout at the door, wrapping a small gift for under their tree if they have one–I’m very fortunate to have friends who think of these things but not everyone does. It helps those isolated to be treated as though they’re being thought of at all.

Otherwise I’ve grand plans to watch Wonder Woman: 1984, binge Bridgerton, and have a quiet spa day with the goodies in my stocking.

Regardless of your circumstances, I hope you carve out time for a much-deserved lovely holiday season. See you in the new year!