I haven’t been blogging recently because there have been a lot of things going on. Some good, some not so much. But also, when I sit down to do a blog post, or a newsletter, or even a social media post, I’m battling my own brain sometimes. Executive dysfunction leads to me sitting at the computer staring at the screen, thinking, “I don’t know what to say” or “Should I do this part or that part first?” Depression and anxiety convince me that there’s no point in blogging because no one will read it. (Does anyone read these posts? Does whether people read them mean I shouldn’t write them?)
I have, though, been working on books and such. Earlier this month, I released Storm and Shelter, book 3 of the Ebb & Flow series, and I finished a near-full rewrite of book 4 of that series, Return and Restore. Trying to wrangle Return and Restore into a cohesive story that didn’t have way too many plot points was one of the reasons my brain was rebelling against doing blog posts and other such things. I knew what I wanted to have happen in that book… but there was way too much of it. So I had to figure out which subplots to hold back for a future book, which ones to keep in…and which ones to just jettison entirely because they aren’t really going to fit anywhere.
I’ve also been getting Much Ado about Muesli, book 9 of Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat, ready to send out for reviews leading up to its January 8 release. That book didn’t fight me quite as much as Return and Restore did, though I did have to take out some crossovers between the two stories (they take place during the same in-universe time frame) because while they worked as part of Much Ado about Muesli, they didn’t work in Return and Restore. But Muesli will join the other 8 books of the series, plus the prequel novel Fresh Meat, in January as scheduled, and Return and Restore, despite having to write and rewrite and re-rewrite it, will be out as scheduled in April.