*Crickets Chirping*

All has been quiet as I've been juggling work with that sanity-thing I'm working on as well as making progress on the WIPs. Instant messengers turned off (save for with two coworkers), Facebook is languishing, and I've just popped onto Twitter now and then because I rather like the...I guess forgiving nature of it, as I can pop on, say one thing quickly, and don't feel obligated to reply. We've had absolutely insane storms which I kinda love because I hate the sun, though that's led to some power outages.

I played hooky and gave myself a three day weekend: went to the movies Friday, ran some errands Saturday then had mum over for homemade pizza and beer, then today I spent some time with a video game and did some major work on the WIPs. Tomorrow morning email answering will battle the need to clean my apartment at the top of my to-do list. I'm still not certain who will win.

It's absolutely glorious to be actually writing regularly again. I adore the tactile feeling of my hands on the keyboard and the sound of keys clicking (I'm a nerd, yes). And then watching words appear out of nothing on the screen, then going back and thinking, "Wow, I wrote that?" is addicting. I can't say I enjoyed the months "off" because writing is like breathing to me, but sometimes a couple needs time apart to appreciate one another. I've mixed my metaphors there, but the muse is so happy to see me that she doesn't even care.

And she's helping me juggle two WIPs at the moment, so yeah, she must love and forgive me. I've committed to catching up with Children of the Apocalypse by posting two chapters a month until the end of Part Three's run in November. These are typically 5K-8K chapters, so that's...a lot of writing.

And equally important is Abandoned's sequel, Wounded. The first 24K has been sent to the beta reader, and I'm currently nearly 28K. And I love this book. It's a little rougher than Abandoned because it can take awhile, I find, to discover the balance in the sequel so that it complements the first without me comparing it to the first.

It occurred to me tonight that when I complete CotA 3 and Wounded in a few months (cross your fingers), I'll have finished my sixteenth and seventeenth novel respectively. I finished my very first novel in 2001 (end of high school), so this will make seventeen books in nine years. That's a little much to wrap my brain around, actually.

I found a lovely cover of my unofficial theme song for Wounded, and thought I'd pass it along.

One of the main characters likes his classic rock on guitar, but this cover feels a little more like my narrator.

Now I've left poor Dessa at the crossroads at midnight, and she has some awful trouble to get into, so I bid you adieu, chickadees.