I first off would like to offer my profound gratitude to the support offered to me earlier in the week when things seemed bleak and the world small. I owe you a debt of gratitude that I will do my best to honor.

Without further ado, a Blogging Post.

I started running a marathon in April. I had never really planned on it. I’m not sure what my plans were. According to the original timeline I set for my second novel, I should be either wrapping things up or, more likely, struggling through writing the damn thing. When I started the book, I gave myself 1-2 years to finish it.

At the end of March, the universe decided otherwise. Instead, I suddenly had less than a month, with a hell of an incentive to get the book done. I sometimes think about what that other novel would have been, how different it might be. I don’t think it would have the same break-neck pacing that came out of my 10-day Writing Frenzy in April. I don’t think I would have the same courage I have now to query in my quest to get it into print. Maybe it would have turned out longer than the 80,000 words it scraped into. I doubt much of the worldbuilding would be the same. Instead of setting my book in the Pacific Northwest, in a bid to write what I know, it would probably still be Edinburgh’s windy, wet streets.

In a weird way, I am profoundly grateful for my layoff. It crystallized my will and gave me the strength to crack through my inattention and finish something I dreamed of doing. The layoff pushed me so far out of my comfort zone and into a marathon that I never prepared for or ever desired to run. I am a different person because of that layoff. I have spent these months since shedding off the protective layer of corporate chitin. I channel the experiences I had into my words and my characters. I know how to research and hit deadlines, but I feel awake again. My eyes stare out afresh to the possibility of magic in the world. I am reading and consuming more books in the past few months than I have in years.

While I swallow my introvert’s trepidation and throttle my natural self-deprecation, I am now the champion of a book, of a set of characters, a found family trying to make sense of a chaotic world under desperate circumstances.