Wow. Life really gets in the way sometimes.
2021 was a bear, with my father’s decline and reaching a point where he no longer recognized me. (It’s horrible for one’s parent to not know who one is.) As his health failed, it consumed the end of 2021 with endless phone calls about him falling. 2022 was more of the same.
It severely damaged my ability to write. He departed this life in the summer of 2022, in the middle of a covid wave at the facility that housed him. (Yes, he had covid, twice, no it was not what did him in.) It hurt to see him go, but it was also a release. It also dragged down my ability to concentrate, and the aftermath was frustrating.
After 2021’s disappointing NaNoWriMo, in which I -a- chose to revise instead of write, and -b- lost all momentum about two days in, I figured that was going to be my last NaNo attempt.
But you know what? Struggle is normal, we have good times and bad times.
I wanted to recapture the fun, and find a way to do some world-building in a story I will (eventually) finish. About a week before NaNoWriMo 2022 kicked off, I decided to do it. I had a start (thanks to a previous project), and I wanted to see how the story ended. I didn’t finish the story, but I did write 70k words. It was invigorating, and the fire’s back in my fingertips after a year’s spiraling into the doldrums.
The NaNoWriMo community continues to rock. Our ML wasn’t as absent as she had been in ’21. A good friend came back, too, and enjoyed some of the (virtual) events I hosted on the region’s discord. Including the SPACE CRUISE, which apparently I never posted about here. Silly me.
So there’s the video. Since I’m working on a higher resolution one, maybe I’ll do a post when that one’s finished.
I’m still having fun with blender, and here’s another tease:
(As you can see, I’m getting the hang of clouds.)
I hope to do a cover reveal in early 2023. In fact, I’ve got quite a TODO list for early 2023, including finalizing covers for the first three Starsailors novellas and finishing revision so I can push them out to Kindle Unlimited. No dates set, yet, but they’ll be announced when they are.
Also, I have three major things to do to the website, too, which I also hope to accomplish 1Q ’23. First, a banner based on my author logo (above, in an early form), second, some necessary cookie opt-out support (probably a WP plugin), and third, an author mailing list.
It’s nice to be back in the saddle.
May your entry into 2023 be as hopeful as mine is!