Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel

Yes, it has been a while since I updated this blog.  There's reasons.  Mostly life has been extremely difficult in some areas that required me to re-prioritize my time.  It meant pulling way back from the internet and social media.  It also meant having less time to write in a consistent fashion even if I did it off-line.  And it meant that what writing I did, turned too dark and graphic for me to want to share it.  While I won't say that things have definitely turned a corner, I can at least say that I'm beginning to manage all of the adjustment reactions in a healthier way.  

My friends can put their mind at rest, there is no problem with my marriage or business.  The fires have indeed forged a strong sword.  My health has also improved though there are the daily challenges to accept the aging process the same way it is for everyone else that is being honest about it.  It's mostly other family stuff and just people being people and doing what people do regardless of the consequences.  The kind of things you just can't share online.

One thing for the moment however is that I've had to put some of the in-progress stories on hold.  The genre and subject matter just pulled me mentally in the wrong direction.  I've been giving some other genres a try and it has helped.

I will finish the other stories, or that is to say that I finished several of them but I am not happy at all with how dark and depressing they went so I am editing them as time allows to hopefully fix the overshadowing my real life did to my writing.

The other thing I need to mention is that over the next couple of months I am going to be migrating all of my stories from blogger/blogspot to fanfiction.net and fictionpress.com because blogger just hasn't been working for me lately.  I will keep this blog up but you can find m stories at:

FictionPress.com:  https://www.fictionpress.com/~motherheninflorida 
FanFiction.net:  https://www.fanfiction.net/~motherheninflorida

Both of the sites you can subscribe to me as an author, or to a story in particular.  If you subscribe to me as an author you'll need to do it for both websites and you'll get notifications whenever I add something new.  If you subscribe to a particular story you'll only get notifications for that particular story.  You can also leave comments at the end of each chapter, same as with blogger/blogspot.  It is a very streamlined, trimmed-down set up, meaning there are no real graphics or links in the stories.  For some that will be great news as they only want the story and nothing but the story as they find anything else distracting.  Navigation for each story is really easy as well.

The story I am currently working on is different than all of my other stories I've shared on blogger, out of personal necessity.  

Yelysaveta

Part drama, part adventure, part coming of age, part lots of things including stories ripped from today's headlines. Veta, a twenty-three-year-old woman, becomes a traveling tutor for nine-year-old Frankie. In the process she grows up even more than her student does. (Note: some language here and there but nothing gratuitous.)

The story is a long one that practically wrote itself since Christmas.  But because FictionPress doesn't allow graphics or varied fonts and certain formatting options, I am having to edit it before posting to strip out all of the gobbledygook that FP doesn't recognize.  In the end the drama dovetails back towards what everyone is used to me writing, it just takes a while to get there.  I will add several chapters each day … but they aren't 10,000 word chapters.  I learned that lesson at least.  LOL

I will try and update this blog as my time and other stuff allows.  For instance, I just pulled the last of the Ponderosa lemons and native carambolas (star fruit) from the trees here in the yard.  I need to get the last of the loquats off the trees before the birds get them all. My son's roses and young apple trees are doing really well and we may actually gets some apples this year as long as the summer isn't brutal and we can avoid another round of hurricanes. The next few weeks … months (through July anyway) … my focus will be on some serious decluttering.  I've done it before but the time has come to be really brutal about it and not due to that new Asian fad that if you don't love something give it to someone who will.  Ugh.  I just need to declutter because I don't want to leave my kids with this houseful of "stuff" to decide what to do with.  I am also tired of tripping over twenty-plus years of business records in the garage and barn.  And I am sharing my LTS canned goods with my parents, helping them to deal with an ever shrinking budget.

For now I must get back to real life … finding tenants, dealing with paperwork, teaching high school, guitar lessons, prepping to finish up the Chemistry merit badge without a troop of boys tonight, and tackling way more laundry than should be humanly acceptable considering I just did five loads yesterday.  

Drop me a comment or here, or comment or PM on FictionPress or FanFiction, if you are so inclined and I'll talk to you all later.