the long year

I’ve been dark most of this year. On December 30th of 2021, the most expensive and violent wildfire fueled by 110 mph sustained winds and drought conditions ripped through our town. We were fortunate enough to keep our home unlike thousands of others, however we were unfortunate enough to sustain severe smoke damage since the house was engulfed in 1600 degree smoke and ash for over six hours. We have spent the past year and are still spending nearly fulltime bringing the house back up to safe standards. We also lost a lot of belongings. I never thought I’d say I hate shopping, but here we are. However, when you need things like cutting boards and carpet and new furniture, you do need them, and all that takes time to procure, plus time to inventory them, and claim them from insurance. (At this point we are like a vampire drinking blood with bare gums with our insurance company.)

The trauma of fleeing a fire and the subsequent work related to putting humpty back together wreaked havoc on my writing and all the adjacent activities like readings and conventions. I did attend one, MileHiCon, in October. It was great to be back and I hope to resume a regular writing schedule as well as some conventions in the New Year. You can look at the tour page to see where I might be in the new year.

In the meantime, I’ve left Twitter, I resumed Facebook (really just to keep in touch with writer fans, and I’m trying Hive (so far not great; it doesn’t seem to like Android) and Mastodon (I find it … confusing), and I’m often posting pics on Instagram (working on the feed here at the site).

I still have books for sale but my last story came out in Straight Outta Deadwood.

I’m currently working on a Robin Hood-esque fantasy and enjoying the hell out of it when I get to work on it. My “Robin” is named Gavin and he is a cocky and magical thief, but well-meaning. Sorta.

A long time ago I used to work on a blog to spur my fiction habit, and it seemed to help. Being that I hardly make yoga, much less writing, each day, we’ll see if I get to resume that. Soon, though. Soon, I will reclaim my life and write again as my job. Soon.