I (Still) Aten’t Dead

Well, it was Covid when I made my last post in this blog! I wonder if it still works? Much of my website doesn’t, and I may be breaking it further by trying to fix it.

Many things have happened since then – chief among them being me getting fibromyalgia and having to adapt to life as a disabled person. Also the world seemed to be spiraling into depths of misery I had not been prepared for. And after ten years of trying to write as much as I could, whether or not I liked what I was writing, I got such a case of burnout that I couldn’t even write fanfiction for five years.

Now, however, the world has reached such a state that it’s triggered my ‘fuck you’ reflex, and I am getting mad rather than sad. This has resulted in the return of some of my ability to write.

I’ve done a short novel of fanfic at least. Hurray for MoDao ZuShi (The Untamed) and all its extraordinarily beautiful people in the most gorgeous outfits, shouting at each other in pavilions. And now the original fiction comes trickling back too – I’m writing a cozy mystery called The Boat of Small Mysteries for my Robyn Beecroft pen name.

As part of this waking up and shaking off process, I’ve also gone through my books and decided that the two big fantasy novels, which my publishers claimed were too big to publish in one volume, were going to be published in one volume, so there.

That meant new cover art and new titles. The cover art was easy to do, but getting a re-titled book through Amazon’s KDP software was much harder.

Amazon’s KDP software DID NOT want me to do that. It does not approve of me changing anything about the title of a pre-existing book even when I’m trying to amalgamate two or more smaller volumes into one. I’m still struggling with that as we speak

I also took one look at the previous cover of Captain’s Surrender, said “What was I thinking!” and made it a new one.

I think I’m more or less back to where I was when I left, now. The windows have been opened, the dust sheets taken off the furniture and the rugs vacuumed. I have lit a perfumed candle or two and put the coffee on. Now I’m more or less ready to go forward with actual writing next week.

I’m sure everyone has forgotten me, but at least I feel as though I am remembering myself.