Personal Bad News — Don’t Worry, I’m Okay

I’ve got some unfortunate news to share with you today, Champions. I’ve been going through some minor health issues, which have ballooned into some larger health issues, and basically I’m going to have two (minor!) surgeries and a slew of dental procedures over the next few weeks.

I’m fine! None of this is life threatening. It is painful–I just got the first procedure done and I have a puffy gums and a bruised jaw–but it’s mostly annoying because of all the recovery time I need. Each procedure has several days recovery, and each surgery has about a week recovery, and the amount of surgeries/procedures my surgeon and dentist think I need keeps fluctuating. (So I might end up with three surgeries total, and only a couple dental procedures, or it might be just the two surgeries and several additional dental procedures on top of what is already planned.)

Basically, when I moved houses (Yaaay! We’re still celebrating that one!) I went to a new dentist who discovered I had a major infection that had eaten into the bone of my upper mouth. I’ll spare you guys the disgusting details, but basically this means I need all of these surgeries/procedures to get that cleaned out and to replace the bone. Yes, all of this was preventable and shouldn’t have been a problem considering I was regularly seeing a dentist for cleanings and checkups, but my previous dentist missed all of the warning signs. (Good thing I moved, huh?)

The extra bad thing about that is that this has been festering for somewhere between two to three years now, which is why I’m getting hit with all of this in a very short amount of time–they want to take care of it before it does more damage.

SO! What does this mean for our community?

There won’t be large change to the release schedule for Pip’s series since I was able to push through and really get those first two books done–I’m now prepping them for editing. At the latest, Pip’s first book will launch in January, but I’m still hoping for a late December release right now. However, this does mean that all of my other planned releases are currently on hold.

The other big thing you’ll notice is that I won’t be posting as much on social media for November, and my Christmas event is going to be scaled down. I’ll probably only have one book for free in December–though I do have some goodies I’ve been waiting to share AND Court of Midnight and Deception and Hall of Blood and Mercy will be on sale sometime in February or January, soooo let’s just count those as an Epiphany celebration or something. 😉

Myrrhlynn is helping me repost some of my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) blogs–so you’re going to see some old content–and Vin has very graciously agreed to head some Champion NaNoWriMo events.

Honestly, having to scale back my plans for Christmas and Thanksgiving crushed me. I love holidays, and I love celebrating holidays with our community. Christmas is my absolute favorite, and I love making it into a huge deal. But I’m trying to keep a positive spin on this, which leads me to…

Thank you, Champions!

When I first found out about the infection and everything that was going to happen, I drove to a parking lot of a Home Goods store, and then proceeded to bawl my eyes out while sitting in my car.  I didn’t know how badly it was going to affect Pip’s trilogy, I didn’t know how I was going to cope with the changes it would force on my work schedule, and I was just plain scared.

I was in pure panic mode…until I started to remember when I broke the news to you all that Angelique book # 5 was going to be released in three years, and I remember how many of you told me that was okay, you would wait, and you very specifically told me you wanted me to focus on my health and make sure you I took care of myself. I can’t tell you how much relief I felt when I remembered that–it’s actually making me cry right now as I think about it just to write this blog post.

So, thank you, Champions, for your support. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate each and every single one of you. You make a huge difference in my life! Thank you for sticking with me through all the fun times–like Sheacon and book releases–and the not so fun times…like surgeries and recovery times. And finally, thanks for reading! 😉

Why I Can’t Write Faster

The vast, vast, vast majority of you Champions are so understanding as to why I can’t write faster than I already do. In fact, I get so many kind messages and sweet emails from you guys because you’re worried about my health and you don’t want me to burn out. Thank you so much for your love and support–I appreciate it so much and I know I’m so blessed to have such a great community behind me.

But every once in a while, I’ll get a reader who wants to know why I can’t write just one additional book per year, or why I don’t try to optimize my process to the fullest extent possible and therefore write more books in the same time. So, I thought I’d open our series of frequently asked question-blog-thingies with the explanation that this is why:

Look Ma, no wrinkles…because my face is TOO FAT to even have smile lines!

No, this picture hasn’t been photoshopped in any way. My face is normally the shape you see on the right side of the pic. But when I get super stressed, and work too many hours for too many weeks and weekends in a row, my body will forcibly shut me down to give me a break. Usually I’ll lose at least a week of work to one of these episodes, sometimes more, and it happens several times a year.

My body will communicate its need to slow down in a myriad of “fun” and “intriguing” ways. The one pictured in the photograph is what happens when I get massive sores in my mouth that randomly erupt and make my cheek swell so bad it looks like it’s trying to split off like a cell in the middle of mitosis. This is an extremely painful condition, particularly because pain killers don’t really work, so I take a bunch of medications to knock myself out so I don’t get sick to my stomach–as I have in the past. If it goes on long enough it can even make my eye start to swell shut–as you can start to see in this picture–which makes life super exciting and pirate-like in ways I never wanted to experience. But what’s worse is I CAN’T EAT DESERT LIKE THIS!! My mouth can’t open because the swelling is so bad and I was off cake for DAYS with this, then there was also the drooling problem… *sobs in the distance.*

Moving on! I’ve seen doctors for my various “exciting” ways my body communicates to me that I’m overdoing things, and the medical pros always tell me that this is my body screaming at me to stop working since I very obviously won’t listen unless it does something this drastic. Like taking away my cake.

And the truth is, writing a book is not a fast thing. Even if I can get the writing of the actual book done in less than a month, it still needs editing from a copy editor and at least two betas–and each one of those people gets it for one to two weeks. And even before I begin writing the book I always outline and flesh out my characters. After the book is polished and edited I still have to make arrangements for its cover and work with Meg to see that the book gets formatted and uploaded by my preorder deadline. I also have to write the extra that I send out as my launch celebration/thank you for reviews–which also has to have one of my betas go over it for typos–and I start prepping all the blog posts/facebook posts I release as part of the launch celebration, too. (I typically do all of this while the betas and editor are going over the book, so no time is wasted.)

Basically, no matter how fast I go, the process of creating, writing, and publishing a book takes several months–and that’s for an average book, not a monster-length like Reign of Magic or The Revived. And–as I mentioned above–my body already punishes me for the pace I’ve set, so it’s not something I can maintain long term.

So can I work faster and for more hours? No. No I can’t. The current pace I’m setting already tests my limits, and I’m aware in the future I’m going to have to slow down to really be mentally and physically healthy.

NOTE!! I know a bunch of you Champions were already worried about my health, and I’m guessing the picture made you scream in horror. But don’t worry, I’m okay now! Thank you so much for your concern. I’m so grateful for our community and the relationship I have with you Champions, because I know you really care about me. As I mentioned, I am taking steps to try and prevent this in the future, and I am aware that none of you want me to push myself to the point where it affects my health.

This concludes the first frequently-asked-questions-blog-thingie! Don’t worry, the rest aren’t this…grim? Worrying? But hopefully they’ll all be illuminating, interesting, or maybe even inspiring! 😉 Thanks for reading, Champions, and have a lovely week!

Click here for the 2022 Update Blog post regarding this topic.

Reader Assumptions

I finally finished my Reader Assumptions video! Here it is for you all to see–though in warning it’s pretty long. It’s just under thirty minutes, so pick a time when you’re doing dishes or something. 😉

https://youtu.be/ETe9XGlxS24?si=kbW6Wc9pOkx8yAeb

As I said on the video, a big thank you to everyone who submitted an assumption! It was so fun to see what areas you were all right in, and some of the comments left on that initial blog post were so heart-warming and amazing. Thanks so much for your love and support, Champions! I am so lucky to have you all.