At Long Last Words About My Long Silence. Part One: The Bad News

At the risk of stating the obvious, I haven’t updated this blog in several months, as you’ve no doubt noticed. I had every intention of updating, but life has royally messed with my creative process. I’ll explain this at some length, but I’d better warn you, it gets involved. I also need to beg your compassion and patience. I write this from a place of great emotional vulnerability, as a fragile human being in need of a bit more than the usual kind words and kind thoughts.

I won’t elaborate, but I’ve had yet more family trouble and health troubles. This has rattled some of my trust as well as my mental stability, to say nothing of the fact that I tend to put other people’s needs above my own, even when I really should take a step back. This left me in a very emotionally vulnerable state, which gradually got worse.

Secondly, back in December, I had slowed down on writing, simply because my day job (grocery retail, if I haven’t talked about it before) had, as it does every Christmas/December holiday season, gotten too busy for me to juggle it and the writing, or at least writing anything working on anything for publication. In that time, I somehow picked up what I’m calling an anti-fan who stalked me on just about every social media account I have. They even tracked down one of the editors I worked with and accused me of being a plagiarist, since I’ve written fanfiction in the past (and while I’m on it, fanfiction isn’t plagiarism; it’s arguably copyright infringement, though as long as no one’s asking money for the fan-created story in question, it’s not something that can be prosecuted). I found this out when said editor contacted me, asking what was going on, though the editor didn’t believe any of this, as the intruder posted such incoherent things, they suspected none of this came from the healthiest of minds. No one needs this, especially when life threw a bunch of curve balls at one’s head. I’m not going to name this person, even though I know who they are and I’ve seen them attack some of my friends in the horror writing community. I do this not to protect this person, but just in case someone should confront them and start the cycle all over again.

Unfortunately, I have a bad case of what’s sometimes called imposter syndrome or fraud syndrome. Despite knowing that I can write well, that my stories have impressed more then several editors, including for more than one market, my mind and my heart worry that nothing I create can really stand up to scrutiny. My rational mind knows this just isn’t true, but the emotive part of me worries otherwise. I suffered a minor nervous breakdown shortly before Christmas, and I’ve since had to cut back on my hours at the day job, in order to regroup. I’m still not out of the woods. I’ve even decided to take a step back from writing horror, as I don’t have the emotional energy to step into the darkness. I’ve returned to one of my roots in fantasy, and I’m working a new story to submit to a fantasy anthology, but mind is working slower than I’d like. I’ve managed to get a couple of stories submitted to a couple of markets, and I’ve revised a few for some other markets. Even still, I’m working slower than I’d like. Maybe I’m just pushing myself hard, but writing is where and when I feel the most alive. It’s a compulsion, but it’s a compulsion that brings my readers a moment of wonder or shivers, depending on the tale.

All of this has made promoting my stuff extremely difficult. I have a hard time self-promoting anyway, since I’ve been on the receiving end of pushy self-promoters and I dread coming across that That Self-Promoter, to the point that I barely promote my stuff when I need to.

I ask only for your continued patience and support, your kind words, prayers, kind thoughts. I’m slowly coming out of a dark place, and every step I take brings me closer to my usual self.

I won’t belabor this half of the news any longer. My next entry, I promise, will more than balance out this gloom.