After an unexpected hiatus...

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I last posted on this blog.

Not long after my last couple of posts, my youngest went into the hospital for over a week. It's a long story, but the short of it is that it was an illness-triggered hunger strike, and we worked it out. After that, well... Have you ever noticed that events come in waves? Graduations, new babies, deaths in the family, financial struggles, and home repair... such are the facts of life. I can't blame my absence on these events alone, however. After all, bloggers write about such things, and I have in the past.

I finished the first draft of my first full-out book, a young adult, sci-fi novella.

Being drawn in by promises of fame and fortune that I already knew were a long shot, I tried to establish a proper "author presence" in preparation for revising and publishing my book. I started a new blog, one that didn't contain all these political and religious discussions that I feared might drive away readers who hate what I believe in. I tried to avoid posting anything inflammatory in it. I put up a pretty Facebook page with a pen name that looked believably like a real name. I started looking at publishing companies and trying to polish up the book to be, not only grammatically correct, but grammatically superior.

What happened?

I lost the will to write!

I stopped revising the book. I stopped writing new chapters on other books. I stopped posting on my blog and only wrote comments on other people's articles, some of which could have easily been polished, as many of my previous posts have been, for this blog. I fell into a months-long slump in which I tried desperately to find ways to make money through writing, while being dragged into a list of catch 22's due to new government regulations that prevented me from doing so! In short, I made the mistake of trying to become someone else so that I could lift the financial burden on my family just a little bit.

Yesterday, I realized (with the extremely helpful feedback from a good friend and fellow author) that it just won't work. I have to be who I am, even if it makes people mad at me, or I can't write the stories that I write.

And so here I am, returning to this blog, the place where I have dared to express opinions that are often bizarre and periodically inflammatory. Here I will stay. I can't be a mainstream author - that just isn't me. I will revise and publish my First Book chapter by chapter, probably on Fictionpress, and I plan to offer it in full form on Amazon for whomever still wants it even after reading it. More will follow. (More are already planned.) I'm a storyteller. I tell stories.

So be prepared, on this blog, to continue reading such odd political and religious thoughts as I have from time to time, as well as updates on my writing and other odd things that I do from day to day!

I hope you enjoy the read.