Once More With Feeling

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Formatting troubles aside, the overwhelming feeling that this is going to fail like everything else I’ve tried over the past year or so is attempting to suffocate me again.

It’s that time of year again, when I reflect on what I’ve done this past year, but we’re not going to do that because reasons. I’m also supposed to make plans for the next year and lay out all the stories and my plan for getting it all published.

We’re not quite doing that this year.

I want to do a bit of a modified 12-in-12. It turned out pretty well last time, I thought, and I got a lot of books done. The idea of doing it again caused a great deal of excitement until I sat down to plan it out and got that low down feeling again.

I never follow the plan, so why plan it out, I think was the point. Dunno, super wish it’d shut up and die already, though.

My very initial plan was to stream and vlog the experience. Might be good for someone out there to see the way I do things. Might help them sort out their own plans on publishing? But a vlog takes editing and that’s a new skill.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be willing to learn. It’s just I wouldn’t have the time, it’s adding something else to my plate that I would need to do and let’s just roll back on the stressors a bit.

I’ve done some livestreams and have gotten wrapped up in the viewers possibly being bored. That’s a stupid way of doing it. Well, doing it for writing specifically. So, I’m debating keeping that in there and livestreaming my work, basically. The videos are only supposed to stay up for two weeks but I now see they’re twenty-five days old and still there. I have a gaming channel too and all the videos from after fourteen days have disappeared.

Now I’m more than a little confused…

That being said, I want the first book to launch in March but that’s not a book that’s going to be written during the challenge. I want Mars Red to launch in March. And I want to start writing December 1.

Which means I need to get Mars Red edited. Right.

I also want to make several box sets. “Smart people” have box sets. It’s just more work piecing it all together and then I get wrapped up in the fact that I don’t think it’s very good and it makes me grumpy. Blah, blah, blah.

But the plan was to make boxsets so I should do that. Listen to myself when I make these plans because they’re good plans. I loved the 12-in-12. It gave me purpose besides staring at a computer screen and spending way too much time thinking about how and why people never seem to like me.

So, let’s drive some danged purpose back into my days.

Part of the livestream purpose was to get me back into writing. It’s like an accountability thing. If I feel like you are expecting me to keep my promise, I will. But if I just make a promise to myself well… maybe I could play a little more of a game I’m not actually enjoying to fill my time instead of doing something I’d really like to do.

If you are a reader, call out a book, a series, a world you’d like added to. I’ve got all the universe to play in.

What I’d like to do? I’d like to write four books in the new Shadows series and publish them one after the other from April to July. I’d like to write Kaz and maybe the first in that witch series for Coffee and Blood. I’d like to write Suicide by Pluck and its sequel. Full stop, it seems that’s just a duo of books but it’s… a thing.

So. December 1st, I start writing again. Shadow of Coventry is my first month. Eight chapters are already written and there may be dice involved. But so help me, it’s going to get finished and other books will follow.

And soon.

Where Things Are At

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

So, clearly I went off the rails again. I apologize. All I’ve really been doing is a side project, one cover, and then playing video games, gardening, and really just being a lazy gamer young adult like I never had the chance to be.

Knowing that, I kind of gave myself a lot of leeway when it came to things I was doing. Don’t want to shower today? Who cares, ain’t nobody in love with me or getting that close.

I didn’t go that long without a shower, just a day, really.

Life has a way of doing this sort of thing to me so I wasn’t necessarily surprised when I was laid off, and the lockdown happened cancelling both planned vacations for relatives I knew, one which would have missed my graduation ceremony, and completely turned my ex-boyfriend’s life on its head because he left me to move to another city for a new job and signed a year-long lease.

And that I only know about because he had a little meltdown on me when I was like “hey, you said you wanted to be friends but I haven’t heard from you and feel like there’s a lot of distance. Is everything okay?”

He turned on the guilt-trip shaming nonsense that never works on me. Well, anymore.

This is my life and it just so happened that this one time didn’t involve a stolen car, drugs, alcohol, missing people, or buildings lighting on fire. So, I just kind of leaned into it and treated it a bit like a lengthy stay-cation.

Which actually means alcohol and one drug was involved but not in the crazy amounts that appear at other junctions in my life… and this time I was drinking, not other people so boozed up they, well, yeah.

Not your therapist, Aya.

Anyhow.

I have been working on myself on and off over that time as I felt I could handle it. There are still days when I get up and I just think the whole world needs to shut up already, but I’m getting there.

So, where am I at writing-wise?

Well, I’ve been trying to get an update for The Others, but that hasn’t been working. Guess I’m more in a fantasy mood. Like, hardcore fantasy, not based in reality at all.

Mars Red is written but completely unedited. I felt no desire to touch that again until just this morning. I wrote this book directly after my breakup so that could have played a factor in the drop it for now response. The cover is also ready to go, as I hired out for that one.

I do have a new series lightly called Coventry and have the cover for that done and ready to go. But the initial series involved a police officer in Canada (almost all my stories are based in Canada or on Canadians…) and I took a hard turn of putting it off after getting so excited about it. This was a slow boil at the back of my mind where I’d fight with myself, then get upset, then get a little depressed, then drop it entirely.

The series needs a re-work for that fact and I think it would make more sense in the fragments I’ve managed to recreate. That’s good, but the bad part is getting the female MC to the point of the opening chapter. I have absolutely no real… hold on, it may have just hit me.

Gosh, I hope it just hit me.

With the above, kind of snarky comment, of wanting something hardcore fantasy, I may need to make another new series but this one… well… completely fantasy. I do have the Two Lovers world which I keep claiming I’ll open up but it feels like that’s a world of rewrites rather than new stories. Last night I did dream of a demon war but besides the war happening and me losing my magic right before the battle–costing countless lives and the arm of my ‘lover’–I don’t recall how we reached that point.

Or why I liked that guy in the first place.

He was such an idiot. Demons were hunting for us through buildings and the like and this moron bunkers down and immediately turns on a light. Like, hello? Do you want to die?

Anyhow, the fantasy series would be something to consider. I don’t think I’ve done true fantasy yet. Urban and vampire, sure, but not true, real fantasy. It’s kind of calling me…

If you have any thoughts, of course, leave a comment or send me a message. You know how to get ahold of me or it’s on the website. I’m not going to use full ideas (because they’re your ideas, not mine) but can take suggestions like “Two Lovers but with dragons!”

 

I Hate Myself Today

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I’m currently working from home, for this I am thankful. Except we may run out of work that I can do as of Monday (for which I apologize to the people I live with).

I went out today for the first time in two weeks to do a grocery run so I (in theory) won’t have to go out for another month. I hear people complaining about this and comparing it to the common flu but I also worry because there are so many being put into medically induced comas so their bodies can fight the virus. Without that, the death toll would be higher.

It started at 3% and has climbed to about 5%.

It’s not much, many say.

Kill about thirty thousand people and it’s the same as planting something like twenty million trees, which no one will do because it’s “too hard”.

And here I am with writer’s block.

I have two side projects and I have the plot for those side projects bothering me day in and day out. Super want to write them, but I can’t. The words are stuck, like behind a dam, and I know this feeling…

I want to write Mars Red and Mr. Wrightworth pops up every once in a while.

Okay, not every once in a while. I saw his real name the other day and he popped in. I responded to someone in chat, “good,” just in a normal fashion and he popped up.

Basically, I want to write, but I can’t.

My meds run ou next month and I considered, given the climate, to just do the work of easing myself off. Then I looked it up.

I’ve made strides while on the medication. Before, I was in survival mode constantly and this has kicked me out and reminded me that there’s something besides survival mode. So, in theory, I’ll do great even off it… but…

I worry.

So, I’ll have to venture out to my doctor’s office in the middle of a pandemic and I happen to know a bit about the medical field (only a bit) and I happen to know this doctor typically only takes on those who really, really need medical help and this has led me to worrying.

I have a family history of rheumatoid arthritis and almost certainly have it but my doctor won’t test until I come in with symptoms because it can result in false positives. That part made sense to me, but the rest didn’t…

Until I read that being treated for such a thing made you vulnerable to sickness. The thing was, they specified. Being treated for rheumatoid arthritis makes you vulnerable. 

Then I got to thinking…

If you can avoid flair-ups… I mean, the problem with rheumatoid arthritis is that your immunity is in overdrive and it ends up attacking the cartilage in your body.

For about two seconds I thought I’m immortal! and an evil laugh.

Anyhow, going out to the doctor causes me anxiety despite being on anxiety medication and needing to talk to the doctor about going off of my anxiety medication despite the pandemic that’s happening.

Let. Me. Fecking. Write.

This is the point where I’d be flipping my desk, if I were working at a desk.

But.

In order to ease off and not fall back into that constant survival mode, I have to call, and then go, to the doctor.

Who I know, for a fact, has to go to the emergency room. Because laws and such. I didn’t know that before. If you end up in the emergency room for more than a couple hours, your doctor comes in to visit you.

Anyhow, that’s my problem. Someone email me tomorrow and tell me to call my doctor so I can get this sorted out and writing within a month.

Might need the money, considering I may be laid off next week…

News Updates

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Contract Sealed is up for pre-order. I thought I was doing pretty good until I crashed directly after this happened.

I’ve been pretty stressed out about where my future income will come from. I had a choice between two employers who would have taken me (near as I can tell) and I chose the one that was the… well, employers aren’t supposed to be like that?

And, I applied for a position and didn’t get it. Then I applied for another one and I was waiting and waiting. During the wait, I got the pre-order for Contract Sealed up. But as soon as it was up I crashed.

Like, laying on my couch, covered in blankets, trying not to cry as my cats pawed at my face because I never do that.

Oh, and my boyfriend broke up with me. Chose a job over me which is only a couple hours away but I thought a couple hours and he thought way too far. It was one of those I like you but I don’t want a long-distance relationship. It’s not you, it’s me.

And three days later I tried to go back online and to the sites because I know how hard it is to find someone when you’re me.

A demisexual with a really dark past.

I think I’m just going to keep buying succulents and adopting cats. I think that’s just the end of my dating because I can’t do this anymore.

And that somehow got me to thinking about my writing. I’ve been at terms with being a demisexual on and off for years but coming more to it and it was sometime over this past week that I realized that’s why I love Mr. Wrightworth so much.

I think I made him hot. He is hot, right? Like, attractive? I can’t remember anymore, and my basis of attractive has always been skewed so I try to use descriptive words I’ve seen and heard about ‘hot’ people.

Anyhow, all that got me wanting to write more of the Contracted series, but I have to edit Contract Delivered first and I put that off in the hopes of being able to pop up and be like SURPRISE! Mars Red is going live in two weeks.

But this past week has had me so down that all I’ve done is stare at pictures of succulents, order seeds online (which probably won’t be processed for two months let alone shipped so no worries about moving a virus across the country), and obsessively brush and pet my oldest cat, Izzy.

Over the past couple of days I’ve come to realize that my female MC from Mars Red is some grey-ace or possibly demisexual herself. The other two were a lot more interested in their beaus. She’s just like “Oh look, Olympus Mons! Can we climb it, can we climb it? Pleeeeeassseee can we climb it?” meanwhile the other humans involved in the book are seeking sex from their adventure buddies, figuring that’s a part of the package.

So… I’m going to run with that line of thought. If it works out that way, then it’s just something for the grey-ace and demisexuals out there, and how many romance books are angled toward them?

Like, none, unless Contracted counts because, let’s face it, something about that keeps pulling me back.

Last night I finally heard about the position, was offered it, actually. I was very excited and very happy. I’m hoping this is a turning point. I haven’t been in an uncertain employment relationship in a long time. Sure, there were times I thought my old job would fire me, but at the end of the day that wouldn’t have happened short of showing up drunk and I wouldn’t have done that.

And there’s the possibility of being quarantined due to COVID-19. I have no health problems that would react to the virus, but I do live in a house with people who might be put at risk if I were to take ill, or if someone else was to bring it into the house. Also, my workplace is the such that everyone and anyone can afford trips. Cruises and trips down south, it’s like everyone’s on vacation, practically.

It’s also done with computers, so if we are quarantined, or self-quarantined, then we can work from home and I am so happy I have dual monitors at home. I would not want to do my job with one.

So, if I’m quarantined with work, then I’ll have work. If I’m quarantined without work, my hopeful plan is to write Mars Red. And if all else fails, let’s face it, I have so many artistic projects on the go, I’ve got enough to last me a couple of months. Not including my reading list.

Fun story, I had one roll of toilet paper left and had to go to two stores to find a pack. Then there was lots of what I can use with my system but nothing else (thank goodness) and I still got the weird “crazy lady” looks for buying one pack.

Medication

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

At this point, I’m almost certain my medication is interfering with my ability to write the way I used to. It’s altered my obsessive traits from the mental to the physical.

I mean, I made three blankets, two cardigans, and a hat in a month (crochet). I bought a piano to play but I can’t… it’s apparently along the same synapses as writing but I was so close to taking off with that. Now I’m cross-stitching.

But I can’t…

I just can’t.

I have at least three more months of meds. At that point my doctor wants to review whether I should go back on them. I’m going to ask to be weaned off and see if I can function better then.

Until then, I need to focus on putting myself back together enough that when I’m off the meds I can… do all the things while doing writing. I want, so badly, to publish twelve books this year but my mental health was failing when I walked into the doctor’s office which is how it came out, how I ended up on the medication.

So I need to put myself back together after decades of being shattered. And it’s killing me a little bit because not being able to write makes me want to crawl into bed and not get up again, but at the same time I know this is temporary. I remember what it was like before and I don’t want that but I also don’t want this.

I suppose that means in the usual fashion I’m going to burn the world to the ground and fix this all for myself.

I want a world where I write, but I also want a world where my PTSD and panic disorder and general and social anxiety don’t eat away at me. I know I’m a strong, extroverted personality that will make friends and change what’s broken in my environment and life. I’m a leader and creative and can be explosive when pushed too far. But my mental health problems have reduced me to a basement gremlin growling at sunlight and hiding under blankets.

So… over the next three months things may seem strange. I may not edit Contract Sealed and Contract Delivered, but that’s not because I don’t want to. I might get wrapped up in Awakened or in a new series I’m working on: Coventry.

Or I might just update The Others randomly.

I just want you to know that the weirdness isn’t because I don’t want to finish these projects. It’s not because I don’t want to write Mars Red, because that would be amazing for me…

It’s because I have three months to piece myself back together enough that when I’m off the medication I can still stand toe-to-toe with an idiot three times my size, carrying an axe, and I can still meet the eyes of my co-workers… and maybe carry on a conversation.

In the meantime…

Re-read your favourites, drop me a line, or, if you really want to help me out, leave a review on Amazon, tell your friends, or talk to your local bookstore about carrying my books.

Changes

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Oh boy…

So. Due to things, I lied to you guys about my employment. This is clearly a pen name, no one is so awesome as to have a last name of DeAniege. I had been with my employer for twelve years and then two very important positions quit and one important body decided to go on on vacation for a month over Christmas in retail.

Their plan?

Me.

That’s a huge backstory and yes, I was an amazing body to have. But I said I couldn’t do it but it still sort of kept coming and I had called it already. I get they needed me, I get that they may not exactly make it through the peak season without some… let’s say some casualties, but I had to do what was best for me.

I started working for another company in my field of study about a month ago and so I gave notice at my long term job.

My course is coming to a close in… gosh, a month now, and this company I’m working for is not only amazing but they seem to want me to be there. Not to mention I haven’t tried working for the other major employer in my field, in my area and they’re willing to interview me for a position that I think is way to important to put a “student” into.

And about six weeks ago, I got a doctor. In my area that’s hard. There’s this thing with like… living in the province with the five top richest families in Canada or something and they control everything and keep it super hobbled. Though, admittedly, it’s gorgeous land and barely dug into from what I can tell but still.

One of them is an oil company…

Anyhow, I got a doctor and during the first appointment, he said he didn’t want to prescribe anything for my anxiety and I nodded in agreement. The doctor gets his way, it was just the introduction and I knew it would be an uphill battle to get my mental health seen to. I’ve heard stories of this all and I tried all the things but was melting down to the point that I wouldn’t talk to my friends in school. I’d just kind of grunt, cringe, and bite back the tears.

By the end of that appointment, I had a prescription for an anti-depressant. I started taking it and my mood was like a pendulum that a cat was playing with. It would be good and kind of hover there, then slam back into bad again.

Turns out, what was once my good day is actually a bad day.

How was I getting out of bed every day?

Damn.

I knew I had mental health problems and struggled with anxiety and the like. I tried treating it on my own, without a doctor, because I didn’t have a doctor.

One of the reasons I always resisted drugs when people mentioned them in the past (besides the fact they were being jerks and saying it because they couldn’t handle my personality) was that I had read up on hypergraphia and learned that anti-depressants are used to treat hypergraphia.

I have hypergraphia, but it’s not to the point of being damaging.

Unless you count damaging as losing a relationship with someone who couldn’t understand that when I told him I had hypergraphia and it was linked to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, that meant that there would be weeks where I wasn’t as loving and responsive as he wanted because I was caught up in the words.

I mean, it also turned out he was a bit of a narcissist and wanted someone to spout nonsense, lovey-dovey sayings about him and support him rather than challenge him while he published his novel through a vanity publisher who can’t tell the difference between patients and patience but it did still cost me that relationship.

So, I suppose, in a way my hypergraphia was damaging a little bit to my life.

… or saved me from a massive mistake.

He’s very happy now and found someone for him, who feeds into what he wants in life, so it’s not all bad, I guess.

Anyhow, I think it was last week when it occurred to me that I’m no longer swimming in words. I struggle to fill a page, I don’t want to use my pens because the compulsion is no longer there. As an instructor is telling us to do something, I am not constructing the outcome out of spare words floating around my mind.

I am no longer the go-to. I can be, if you want editing or construction or management, but if you want something finely crafted, I can’t always be the go-to. I try to end things with “and something-something, an ending here.”

My stories and worlds have been slowly bubbling under the surface. Mr. Wrightworth visited for a time, bent Nathanial over the bed… and the floor… and the couch.

Damn it, he bothered me for days.

And there’s a running world, a new one, when I need to fall asleep but can’t. A messenger in a world of low tech. All they do is ride from city to city under the rule of the Guild, protected from everything and carrying messages silently. It’s… peaceful.

Except for the war that broke out, and the man determined to learn their identity, who then does and refuses to tell the Guild who they are while chasing after them, trying to find alone time.

Yeah, so that might be happening. I’m just trying to figure it all out because I’ve been riding in the messenger’s head so I know all about them but the story itself would be told from the perspective of others who don’t know.

Anyhow. After a week on my medication, I began talking to an old flame who had some mental health difficulties of his own. We broke it off when he decided he didn’t have the energy to look after himself and to carry on a relationship where we barely saw each other. The timing has changed, we’ve both changed. Things are going well.

A week later, I had a new job. Three days after that, I gave notice at my old job with no regrets.

I started talking to people in my class. Not everything was the end of the world anymore, which I knew to start, but struggled with.

There was a paper I read once which is always hard to explain and I wish I had saved it. But it’s been a decade and I was doing drunken research of psychology papers. What it basically said was that children who grow up in certain environments struggle later on. It was made into a metaphor. If you grow up in the mountains and find yourself on the plains as an adult, all you’ll see are mountains.

My brain needs a rest. It’s been in survival mode so long, it didn’t understand how to be anything else and I now have about six months reprieve. In six months, my case will be reevaluated and I may be taken off my medication. That both terrifies and excites me.

I’m not writing like I used to and I miss that. I still get wrapped up and obsessed with certain things, like Mr. Wrightworth trying to add five chapters to Contract Sealed in sex alone, but getting it onto paper or written form is a lot harder. I’m no longer thinking in letters or words. Memories come back to me. I recall what happened the day before even a week ago, better than I ever have.

My brain is rewiring itself and if this is how regular people see the world… I’m confused. I can still do what I could do before. Still be as fast, still be as accomplished.

Just proves that my being able to knock off due dates and tasks so fast isn’t a me thing. I’m not a special bunny, anyone can do it.

But my written words seem to fail me.

So, when I needed something to do because gaming wasn’t an option, I decided to learn crochet. It’ll be hard, I told myself, difficult, surely.

… I’ve completed a lap blanket, an afghan, a cardigan, a bag, and have now started a new blanket for my boyfriend.

Guy doesn’t have a warm blanket, who doesn’t have a warm blanket? I mean, he has plenty of blankets, but none of them generate the amount of warmth I need.

Anyhow, I did four projects in four weeks. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, that’s a full-sized afghan. I think… uh, 52×60 or so?

The bag pissed me off. It took forever. The new blanket promises to take a while which I’m not overly happy about because I’m supposed to really devote myself to edits starting on Tuesday and it’s a Christmas gift.

Oh, yeah, I’m back to work on Tuesday. Dire Consequences, Contract Sealed, and Contract Delivered are written and should be published. And I want to write Mars Red, and Kaz at least.

Struggling

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I’m having a bad mental health week. It’s mainly a bunch of events which are toppling on top of one another, and because I’m so self-critical, the first couple wore me out, and then my problems compounded the actual problems.

Which all ends up meaning that all I want to do is sleep.

My student grants were absolutely gutted by OSAP, I received maybe a quarter of what I did last year when I had a higher income. Oh, and one of my grants from that province might have also been retroactively turned into a loan. Not because I don’t meet the criteria for the grant I was given but because.

I wasn’t taking any loans, I was only taking grants. It’s not necessarily about pride, it’s about how I know I’ll feel once I get out of school and have to pay off yet another debt. It’s bad enough I was living in said province and in poverty despite making well above minimum wage because of the cost of living. Bad enough I’m deeply in debt because I had to buy food while in said province and it was either on my credit card or going hungry.

But, hey, let’s suddenly change the rules and change this, so I have to pay it back even though that’s not the agreement we entered in the first place.

That, of course, led into a conversation with my boss where I told her about my grant situation and how I needed the hours from the start of last year (basically whatever I could get) because my funding has been gutted. Except my hours are suddenly being cut with no explanation.

And, frankly, I’m not going to ask. At this point, it’s a whatever. Yet again this company is not keeping its verbal agreement and, yet again, I’ve had no advance warning or talk before it happened. Fine. Whatever.

Except it also means I can’t pay my full board to my relatives because I do need food and gas to get to and from school and I know we agreed what I could afford but they’ve been receiving the same amount for the last year, so it’s come as an expectation but my next pay, at this point, would barely cover the boarding price, let alone anything else I may need.

So, a job opening came up, and I applied and had an interview yesterday. I did well until they reached the self-critical questions because I’m very critical of myself and “I’m a fucking idiot” is not an acceptable answer in an interview. And I reviewed these things with myself beforehand, but I fumbled, freaking fumbled.

It would have been a perfect job too. Described as data entry with a bit of research.

That’s my bread and butter. It’s basically what writing and editing are. Data entry and a bit of research, and what happens when I make a mistake?

I pretty well beat myself into a puddle and a mess.

So… probably not getting that job. It would have worked around my current job too which means my income would have gone up instead of down and I would be in the field I’m training for instead of being in the wrong field while in school.

Gawd, it would have been amazing.

So, all that was hanging over my plate after my bad mental health week.

One of the places I want to go has a medical checklist. I get it, I understand why I need it filled out. But I have no doctor because I’m an orphan patient. So… I started calling around to walk-in and after-hours clinics. You know, the places people like me go when they have a problem.

Turns out none of them will even look at the form. I told them it was school leading into work and they still won’t do it. I contacted the health network, and they seemed confused because I should have been able to go into any walk-in and get that done. I asked for specifics and gave them the names of the things requested, and they gave me some language to use and a specific clinic to go to.

The clinic is almost half an hour drive away, but you know what? If it gets done.

Oh, and that also appeared over my plate after my bad mental health week.

All happening as a personal thing is going down and I’m crying over it. Not because I’m sad, but because my system is just so overwhelmed it’s like “Fuck you, I’m shutting down.”

I haven’t had a week this bad in a very, very long time, and for that I’m grateful. But it’s definitely causing other problems.

Last night I had dinner with new people, and it’s this group that gathers once a month and is part of an association. I wanted to join them last year but couldn’t because I couldn’t get a day off once a freaking month to go. So that caused some anxiety, but it ended up being good. The only issue was that it was at the end of everything else. Everything else happened, and then I went to this dinner.

But the dinner was good. Except for the part where I didn’t talk to very many people because all I wanted to do was curl up in the corner and weep because my system is still in overload.

I did not cry.

Good for me.

As I was driving home last night, I was utterly exhausted. I showered and went to bed only to wake up this morning feeling like I had woken from a fever, except the fever hasn’t broken? It’s not that relief of a fever breaking. Everything is aching, and my head is full of clouds, and the only feeling I’m sure of is being cold and being tired and wondering who beat me up while I was sleeping.

I don’t recall any dreams. All I know is that Darius, one of my cats, climbed onto my face and then checked on me several times as I tried to fall back asleep. He ended up sleeping curled against my neck and face for several hours. The rest of my night was sleep, just sleep, near as I can tell.

So I shouldn’t feel this way.

Today, I’m basically waiting on a rejection letter. I’m expecting it, but it’s not going to feel any better when it arrives. Because I know my mood at the moment, I’ve made certain a game is up to date on my laptop, and that’s what I’ll be doing today. Playing the game instead of trying to edit or write because I just… I can’t right now, no matter how much I want to.

I have three books to edit, and I really want to get them done. Dire Consequences is what I’m in the middle of, but I want to get into Contract Sealed. I just feel like I could use some Mr. Wrightworth right now.

Discord

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I’ve added a discord server for all things writing. This gives a place where I can update and you can easily talk to me about what’s going on. Facebook sometimes isn’t updating me and somehow my site notifications are getting lost but Discord is kind of like “Hey, hey, hey, look at me!”

You will need to have a discord account, or make one (it’s completely free) and exist for 5-10 minutes before you can join.

https://discord.gg/S3xRA4G

Summer Plans

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I had to open my availability up at work so I’m not a hundred percent certain how this is going to look.

This summer, I want to get through Nate’s Story and have it up and ready to go, preferably to have it launch August 20 but I don’t think I’ll make that deadline. That’s fine, it’s fine, I’ve been brain dead and you have to give yourself time to recover otherwise you’ll wind up permanently shutting down.

I feel like I’m forgetting a magic book or something, just sitting off in the corner of what I wrote before and haven’t finished with yet.

What I’d like to do is write Savage Shores (alien utopia/dystopia thing) I’m writing this because it involves a paradise ship and I’m taking a vacation to basic paradise so I’m going to take a notepad with me and my camera and do some intense research. The intro is written too, I just need to swing in from where I have written, add more steam, bam, done in a week.

… if I… work and Nate’s Story are getting in the way.

Anyone know how to clone a person?

This is definitely where normal people have editors, I know. But the day job isn’t paying a living wage, I can’t afford to pump that kind of money into books at the speed I write without a business credit card and I think my bank is actually laughing at me right about now.

If Savage Shores is written I can mangle time in there to do the edits but that version has to be on my desktop. I use ProWritingAid for that part and it won’t work on my laptop and the help service has decided not to… you know, help me.

I reached the limit of what I can do to troubleshoot at the moment so I walked away rather than spend ten to twenty hours finding the solution when I need that time for other things.

Once Savage Shores is written I’d pretty well launch right into editing. I’ve heard of authors doing all their edits in less than two days. Makes me wonder if I’m being too particular, but I’d …well, I’d like to try something like that and have Savage Shores out this year too.

Nate’s Story, I’m going to start reading again today because there are certain things from Izzy’s Story which need to be seen to in Nate’s Story, you know, plot holes, continuity, etc. So power through that and then start edits. Workload wise, these last two weeks of school sound simple, if they are as simple as they sound, I should have some work periods at school to devote to editing Nate’s Story.

The week of June 14 you won’t hear from me, I will not exist.

Unless I can write off that trip as a research expense, then yes, yes I do exist. But I don’t think that’s how write offs work.

I have two Wattpad stories to update weekly. The one has eleven or thirteen chapters pre-written which will take me all the way to … September? Before I “have to” make time for that but I will likely add more chapters between now and then. For The Arcane, I’ve been writing them weekly, but it’s two to three hours of writing and then off it goes. So I’ll slot that in every week.

I do have a side thing I have to do, but it’s basically a read and format , shouldn’t take more than a couple days as long as I don’t get sucked into doing the cover.

… I’ll probably get sucked into doing the cover.

As of July 1st I am going to sit down and manage and schedule. No school means I have 30 hours a week free. I have one week booked off that’s for family time but it’s not all going to be family time, so out comes the laptop for that.

If, and that’s a big if, but if I get Savage Shores and Nate’s Story done in time? I’m writing Dire Consequences in August. The third and final book of Morgan/Rachel. From there on it’s solo books in the world of daughters.

I need all the luck I can get. But it’s good to have a plan set out, because once I have a plan, I’m more likely to get stuff done. So. Let’s get this done.

Progress

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Grim Port is up for pre-order, the file complete. Grim Haven is about halfway through the read edit, I’m still hoping to have it done tomorrow, and to start Grim Travels tomorrow.

After that I don’t know what I’m doing. I plan to take a couple weeks off and such…

Mr. Wrightworth is up and wants to play more with Will. I think I have him on the hook to do edits and re-writes for Nate’s Story as that is my desire, to finish with that and publish it. Then the novella for Mr. Wrightworth which segways into Will’s story, then rewrite Will’s Story into probably three books, at least one more though to make it work, then on to Contract Gifted to expand that into at least one full book. Then to wrap it all up with a book about how Mr. Wrightworth got out of the slum at which point the entire series is wrapped up and ends with his birth name being revealed.

I don’t know why, that’s just always been the shifting ending.

I also want to write D.o.t.A. book three, which is a Morgan and Rachel story with more smut than book one.

But I need to put the vampires to bed for a bit first.

My problem is: I think I have an episode coming on. Extreme stress, frustration, and being overworked does it to me. This is, I think, the first in a year, but it messes with my memories. I was hoping if it happens, it happened around my relatives so I could get an actual freaking recording of it to submit to a doctor.

You know, to get properly treated.

I’m concerned about it because suddenly it’s on my mind. I almost never think of them. And something I’m taking helps with anxiety, sleep, and supposed to treat the conditions I may have but have no proof to give to a medical professional for. The brain’s a funny thing. So, in theory, it shouldn’t happen.

But if it does, it will be in the next week and I won’t be home.

If it happens at school I’ve got two ex-nurses in the class, I should (in theory) be covered there. Except I think if it’s a seizure, even though it wouldn’t be a physical thrashing type, they would call an ambulance and I can’t afford the bill right now.

If it happens at work I’m going to get two middle fingers up in the air and will have to work through it. I would reach out and have someone pick me up after as I don’t think I’ve ever driven after an episode and I’m not about to try now.

Work changed my schedule, took away my every other Sunday off until I don’t know when. I’m working mornings as well. I don’t know why. I can assume it’s because of vacations but someone is coming in to cover the other vacation so I’m not understanding why this person who is covering isn’t working all the shifts to give me a day off.

I kind of mentally clocked out when I found out I wasn’t getting another day off. I do recall something about it not being fair to the others.

What about fair to me?

I can’t argue for my day off though. I feel like if I do I’ll be asked to step down. I’ll be reduced to minimum wage and have to open my availability and work my hours to make what I do on a reduced hour schedule. I can’t advocate for myself because I’d be reduced to a normal part timer, is what I feel.

Except I’d still be expected to do the things I do now, and wind up training my replacement while making minimum wage.

To me that doesn’t sound fair. And when I feel like that, I’m more likely to have an episode. It breaks my brain when I’m put in a no-win situation.

Why am I worried if I’m taking something that’s supposed to reduce or get rid of episodes?

Supposed is the key word there. I’m not with a doctor, this was not suggested to me by a health care practitioner. I did research and then went with what I could to lower my chances of having an episode while I wait for a doctor.

Also, last night when I was talking to a client the edges of my vision began going black. My face went numb and thank goodness for the voice that screamed, “Oh shit, something’s wrong!” or I probably would have passed out.

Not that the client would have helped me, as somehow I screwed up and the interaction went south very fast but I’ve found I mimic when I start checking out and people don’t like that.

Afterward I started crying uncontrollably and had that godawful hollowed out sick feeling because not fainting didn’t fix whatever is wrong.

I think I need to be put on stress leave. I just need a couple of weeks, even if it’s just school.

Can’t get a summer job, all postings are now for those ages 15-30 because of a government program and I don’t qualify because of my age. I can no longer afford to take the summer off because of the uncertainty of the student loan/grant system which is supposed to fund my school. It’s currently being gutted both by the province I once lived in and the one I now live in because “it’s not fair to those who have student loans and are paying them.”

…

No. And since apparently no one here wants to vote, I’ll fucking vote and I’ll vote to get you out of office. And, bee-tee-dubs, this isn’t a bipartisan system so your ‘competition’ is also not getting my vote unless they are actually what is good for our future.