This is Ridiculous. I’m Ridiculous.

I see that it has been…[checks open tab]…well over a year since I’ve posted. WTF. I’m sorry. If there’s any sort of “audience” left from when I last published a book you’re probably confused to receive a notification. “Who’s that? What the hell is this from?”

Sure, it took me many years to write the first book but I figured that was because it was the first book and thus got rewritten at least five times as I “learned by doing.” The second book was a much quicker process—two years, I think? And during that time, my newly widowed mother and I bought a house in a different state, moved to it, renovated it and the yard, and I worked retail part time and did some computer animation projects. So I had every expectation that the third book would go more like that.

Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahahaha.

Nope.

It’s not the book’s fault. It’s not that I developed some sort of horrible writer’s block or decided that I hated writing. None of that. It’s that life got…crazy. I’ve eluded to some of that here, I know (even if I can’t exactly recall what I wrote and no, I’m not going to go back and check; it doesn’t matter). What happened to my writing process was: Life. And I simply didn’t have the “bandwidth” to prioritize writing while slowly shifting from household-partner with my aging mother to the “I’m the boss” role which I tried to claim when I was two but would happily give back now that I know more what it entails. I prioritized other things: Various health scares and mishaps (hers, mostly genuine including several hospital stays; mine, mostly phobic or a confused stress response or idiopathic reactions to seemingly innocuous things like vitamin supplements, apple cider vinegar, and a whole host of nonsense thanks to an attempt at thyroid medication); Another household move, this time across almost the entire country to a house that needed a surprising amount of work and a huge yard that still does and probably will always do; and, perhaps most annoyingly, a kind of Existential Crisis, flare-ups of anxiety issues and intrusive phobia/overwhelm responses, and the whole “Let’s Navigate a Pandemic.” One would think that isolating at home would lend itself to all sorts of time and space for working on Book 3 but obviously it did not.

I AM STILL WORKING ON THE BOOK.

Repeat: I am still working on the book. I’m not sure that anyone else cares at this point—and that’s fine! Just know that I do still care, and I am still on it, albeit slowly/sporadically as higher priority things move in and out of the way.

It is more than 3/4 finished. Everything that is not yet written is outlined, sometimes in detail. I would love to put an approximate Publication Date on that but every time I do it seems to be tempting some sort of chaos or traumatizing confusion so I will not do that. There’s a “free file upload” this month at the company I use to distribute and print. To be able to take advantage of that would be wonderful. I’m not sure it’s at all realistic.

Anyway, thanks for reading this, and thank you so much for any continued interest. That it is taking this long to write and publish The Vale of Silence is ridiculous…but also, no, it isn’t. I’m ridiculous, but also, no, I’m not. There has been a lot going on, and sure, the possibility exists that I could have handled it all differently or better – but the possibility also exists that I could have given up on the book entirely, and I haven’t. I hope you haven’t given up, either, on whatever you’ve been working on and trying to balance in the midst of a worldwide Very Difficult Time.