An update on me, and what I'm working on
Hello, my dears. I am sad not talking to you, so I'm going to talk to you. 
So! This year has been kinda sucky. I've spent a good three months of it flat on my back, and not in the fun way. First I had pneumonia, then I had labyrinthitis as a result. It's an infection of the inner ear, makes you dizzy as hell. I still have it, a little. When I first lie down and when I first get up, the room spins like I'm on the Tilt-a-Whirl. It's kinda like being drunk for free. Oh, and pneumonia is horrible. I've never had it before and I hope I never have it again. I'm getting close to the age where I'll have to get vaccinated for it in the fall. Not quite there yet. Velvet Ackbar has gotten it the last two (three?) years in a row--he's definitely getting the shot.
(Related: Do you get a flu shot? I've just started getting it in the last couple years.)
And then there was the capper: heart surgery.
Some of you know my various adventures. I won't go into a whole lot of detail. Suffice it to say I have a rare, probably genetic condition called Prinzmetal's angina that makes my heart go beserk now and again, especially on a particular blood pressure medication that everyone else in the known universe can take without side effects, so medical people often don't believe me and give it to me anyway. That's how I ended up in 2006 in the CICU for three weeks with uncontrollable angina. It stopped when my heart stopped. And that's why I have this internal cardiodefibrillator (ICD) box implanted above my left breast. If my heart stops again, zzap, it'll bring me back.
Except not long after it was implanted, like three months after, one of the wires leading from it to my heart was recalled. Eh, we'll leave it in, they said, the risk of it fracturing is less than the risk of more heart surgery.
Flash forward to 2013. The battery on the ICD is dying. They have to go in and replace it, and while they're at it, they decide to dig out the defective lead and replace it, too. Seven years has increased the risk of it breaking and delivering repeated, unnecessary shocks to my heart. Day surgery became three days in the hospital.
But now I'm out and mostly recovered, all new wiring, all new ICD. I have to go through the ICD replacement in seven or eight years, but I'll think about it then.
So that's why I haven't gotten much writing done this year! I'm working now, though. What on?
I've written two short stories that my editor Annetta Ribken tells me are very good. One of them is at a major SFF publication, where they are peering at it and poking at it and seeing if they want to buy it. It's made it past the first hurdle. That's raised the chances they'll buy it from less than 10% to about 50-50. If they do, you'll hear about it and how to read it.
The other story? Annetta bought it herself. It's called "Vista Bridge" and it will be appearing as part of the Allegories of the Tarot anthology as the Wheel of Fortune card. More on that story later.
I'm working on an erotic romance that I'll be putting out under my Aria Afton pen name. I'm moving any erotica writing I do onto that name, in fact, I wish I could take "The Mage's Toy" and "The Amber Cross" and put them under that name, but too late.
I have a new episode of "Scryer's Gulch" written but don't want to release it until I have at least one other to release as well.
During the Kickstarter for Son in Sorrow I promised a short story collection based on a set of stories I wrote a long time ago about Temmin and Jenks when Tem was little. I've been working on the main--and possibly only, it's coming out long--story, "Standfast," for some time now and may be seeing daylight. That will be going out free to Kickstarters and I'll make it available to the rest of all y'all somehow, either for purchase or as a gift for signing up for my mailing list, which you should do, because things are about to get interesting over there.
I have the next Drifting Isle book outlined and will be working on it for NaNoWriMo. It's called Songbird, and it's about Johanna Diederich and Simon Ritter, characters mentioned in The Machine God.
Aaaaand, yes, I'm working on book three, working title Queens. It's being an absolute booger, seriously, I've rarely been this stymied. But I will wrestle it to the ground! It or me, and it ain't gonna be me!
What have you guys been up to? Which of these projects are you most excited about seeing? I really want to know!
