My Triumphant Return to Blogging (Maybe)!!

Welcome back! That sentiment is more for me than it is for you, I assure you. When we last left our intrepid heroine (that’s me, in case you were wondering), I had announced a hiatus from regular posting to this blog so I could get my shit together.

Well, that hiatus lasted much longer than I anticipated, but it was good for me. Do I have my shit together? Spoiler alert: no. Do we ever really have our shit together? No, I don’t have my shit entirely together, but I have it more together than I did when I wrote my last blog post in mid-February. I feel like my daughter and I are finally getting into a groove and getting used to it just being the two of us. I have more good days than bad ones and that’s an improvement, too.

Of course, that doesn’t mean things have calmed down for us at all. We’ve had two car crashes (despite being out of the traffic safety field for almost four years, I still can’t call them accidents)–one for my son (his fault) that required an additional car purchase, and one for me (not my fault) with mostly cosmetic damage. I know, y’all. But wait, there’s more! My daughter suffered repeated ankle injuries and likely needs surgery, but not until after she GRADUATES FROM HIGH SCHOOL and we go on a marvelous cruise vacation.

And all that’s happened in the last six weeks.

I have a friend (Hi, Mitch!) who used to tell me that life was one long maintenance contract, and he was right. I have a more succinct way of expressing that: Adulting is bullshit. But we have no choice but to do it. Also bullshit. We just keep on keepin’ on. The only way out is through.

Though that extra-long break was good for me, I missed this. There’s this quote from Ray Bradbury I’ve seen a thousand times and it finally started to make sense to me: “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” I’ve always known writing was something I loved to do, but also something I needed to do, for my own sanity. I’ve written that writing fiction can be an escape in much the same way reading can, but I’ve realized since then how much I need to write, how important it is for my own survival.

And this blog post is the most I’ve written in weeks.

I’d hoped Whatever Will Be would be published on April 18, the third anniversary of the date I finished writing it. But for one reason or another (that I won’t bore you with), publication has stalled. It will be published this year, and I’m hoping for this summer, but I’m going to be kind with myself, give myself some grace, and not put a date on it. Rest assured, when it has been published and you can buy your very own copy, I will post it here and on my Books page. Until then, know I am working on it, and publishing it is still the ultimate goal and will be third on my list of my amazing accomplishments (right after the first-place tie of raising each of my kids).

It is my sincere hope that long-awaited (maybe I’m over-estimating how much you are actually waiting for it) novel is just the beginning. I continue to work on the other things I have written that are currently in various states of completion, and though I haven’t landed on an idea for NaNoWriMo yet, I’m hopeful one will strike, and if it doesn’t, I have a list of ideas I can choose from, even if none of them is really knocking my socks off right now.

This is not the last you will hear from me.

In the meantime, I also hope to get back to posting on a more regular schedule, if not every week, than more often than every four months.

Thanks for hanging in with me through my extra long pause. Having an audience to write to means everything to me. I hope reading my musings is one of the things you do that make you happy.