Last August, my grandfather passed away. He had been ill with cancer for some months, but had not told anyone about it, and so by the time it became bad enough that he had to go to the hospital, he had very little time left. He was not in too much pain, and did not suffer for long, which I am very grateful for. He was my last remaining grandparent, and the one that I had been closest to; I was fortunate enough to live with him for six months following my undergrad graduation, doing an internship in the town where he lived. His loss has been very difficult for me, and even now I still struggle with it at times. For a few months immediately afterwards, I did not really feel much like writing or even editing, which is partly why it took me so long to get back to work on TWoS.

On a more positive front, I had more hours at work during the second half of last year, and as of the beginning of 2016, am full-time and even got a small raise. Since I really love my job, this is very exciting! It also allowed me to finally get my own place again (I had been staying with family since the beginning of 2014), but the moving/unpacking process then took up much of November and December, and some time in January. In addition to my full 40-hour week, this hasn’t always left me with a lot of time to write.

So, I have not been nearly as active with my writing over the past several months as I would have liked. I have at least been working on the latest edit of TWoS for the past couple months, which will be the last one before I send it to my editor. Once I have a final draft that I am satisfied with, I’ll be looking more into the self-publishing process (which I’ve put off because I didn’t want to let that research distract me from actually getting the story written!). Depending on how that process goes, and my time/money situation, I would like to have TWoS officially published sometime before the end of 2016.

I do have one more short story in my im/mortal series written, and another in the works. Some other snippets may be forthcoming as well, and I am going to start some planning and drafting of my next larger project once I’m a bit more settled on the TWoS draft.

Thank you again to anyone who has given me support or enjoyed my writing thus far, and know that more is coming. Hopefully soon!

~Ethelinda