I had enormous plans this year for my birthday. This year, after all, I turn 29. And I intended to launch a fun writing competition on Wattpad, start daily updates for a new Gothic vampire multicultural urban fantasy, and increase updates on Tue-Rah Ecekom’s King, Ragnarok Undone, and Parnimo’s Prize while also updating Blessed? Battle for the Lunar Realm. Among other things. I also had a whole series of videos I wanted to finish shooting and preparing for my writing students, tutees, and so on, including some reviews of some great new books.

But all that went out the window because within a day of returning from Alaska, I went down sick. It’s been so frustrating. My immune system just doesn’t seem able to cope with things as I want it to. And, for whatever reason, I had had perpetual nightmares in the little time I have slept since returning from Alaska. As it takes me hours to fall asleep anyway and even then I can only manage a couple REM cycles before I’m up again, the nightmares are even more troubling.

Hopefully that ends. On the plus side, it has kept me in a great frame of mind for writing Of Blood and Teeth and Magic. It’s now live on Wattpad with daily updates, and it is doing fairly well, considering it’s a stand alone. I won’t be able to finish the spider story for “Defying Doomsday.” That was too creepy, and writing about an insomniac who must battle spiders was hitting a little too close to home.

I am so grateful that I am able to write though. I think it’s one of the ways that God gave me to help keep me sane. I can’t imagine what life would be like without stories. Especially without my characters.

In other good news though, now that I have my health back for the most part, the contest is live! I have the full details posted on my Wattpad account under Tue-Rah Fiction Appreciation Contest. I think it’s a fun idea because the categories are based off what my characters would like to read if they were real people.

So really, there was just a two week delay. Everything else will be taken care of. Tue-Rah updates continue to come. Parnimo’s Prize is currently rivaling Tue-Rah Ecekom’s King with readers while Ragnarok Undone is sitting quietly on its own. My Ragnarok readers have told me that they want to wait until the book is all done before they dig in, which I thoroughly understand.

Reading on Wattpad requires reading in a slightly different way. I’m really curious to see what the greater implications of that are in the long term, but that will be a post for another day.

It has been quite awhile since an update. In fact, each time I’ve sat down to try to write about life and blog, something has happened. And not all of it is bad. Most of it has just been busy.

But I’ve still been writing fiction, of course. I’ve spent about four weeks out of the past seven sick. But I’ve still been working on stories. It’s been fairly amusing going back through stories written while I had a fever over 101. It gets rather…interesting.

However, now that I have my voice back for the most part, I’m planning to get back into the Talk Story to Me and other plans. It’s been a whirlwind of a past month. But I think July is going to be even better.