Good things are happening! It's nice, with the kind of year this has been both globally and personally, to start a post with those words. I'm glad I have the ability to make some good things for readers in the midst of the pandemic. The final chapter of the rewrite for the current novel-in-progress will be going up on Patreon for subscribers in August. It's been a long journey. The rewrites I've done have been hard. The initial draft had an assortment of problems---as all first drafts do---but things in my personal life disrupted the initial rewrite (my mother-in-law's cancer returning, her treatments, and subsequent death), then during this last rewrite my own mother got sick, was hospitalized, and died...and that's just family. It doesn't include the deaths of friends, of which there have been way too many, way too young. I'm just talking about pre-pandemic. So far, I've been lucky not to lose any friends or family to COVID-19. To some extent I'm sort of bracing for impact. But I'm still writing, and rewriting. There's never a good time to be a writer, no author depends on a perfect life for their creativity to bloom. If creativity was dependent on everything being just right, very little creative work would ever get done, and we would all be the poorer for it. My writing has sustained me and I hope it's sustaining you, too.
I've always enjoyed escapist fiction and I'm very glad to be writing it for all the people who need an escape during these trying times. I'll be finishing up one book and going on to work on another for my Patreon subscribers, even as the book I just "finished" moves slowly toward publication. Additionally I've got some short fiction ideas and characters who will be making appearances. I'd planned on introducing an audio tier to my Patreon this year, but with the economy crashing it doesn't seem like an ideal time to add another tier. For now I will continue to occasionally do audio stories as bonus material for all patrons. The basic patron subscription is just one dollar per month (plus tax🙄) and that covers novels-in-progress, short stories, and occasional bonuses like audio stories.
I will also occasionally be writing for a new group blog, Girls Who Love Board Games. I've expanded my very small collection of board games, and gotten some digital board games, since the lockdown began. My first piece, Horrified: A Review with a Village Full of Monsters, was published a few days ago. GWLBG is a great bunch of women who I enjoy hanging out with online. They have a presence on many social media and online game platforms. If you identify as female and like board games, look for them on your favorite online sites.
You can find me, additionally, in all the usual places, Patreon, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. The great thing about online places is that I'm there even when I'm not. I'll pop in after I've finished writing, so interactions may not be instantaneous, but I do enjoy chatting with friends and fans!
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