Hello, 2022. Here's to new beginnings!

Like everyone else, life has been a whirlwind for me and my family the past few years. There have been joyous moments and times of grief, but right now I want to focus on the joy, because in spite of all of the misery in the world, I have a lot of happiness to share today.

The first big event I want to share is that I joined the Great Resignation! I didn’t stop working a day job entirely… and truthfully, no matter how well my books do, I intend to continue working in my field because I love it. But I did make the hard decision to leave one employer for another.

I have worked as an instructional designer for a decade, and spent the last eight years in one institution that I truly loved. If you know much about instructional design, you know that life has been crazy for us since the pandemic shifted virtually everyone into online learning. My previous job was no exception—demand went through the roof. But I was the only one in that dedicated role for the institution, and there was no funding for additional support. It got to the point where I had to start cutting out things I loved—spending time with my family and writing included—as I was doing far (FAR) too many hours on my own time. Then I had a visit with a concerned doctor who suggested my stress would be reduced if I went on leave, and I realized I couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t want to take six months off. What would that solve? I just needed to get real about my situation and find a place where there was more support. And thankfully, I did! I am now a member of a team of instructional designers, and I feel like I can breathe again!

Another big joy I have to share is that I am now working on my dissertation. It has been a long road, and has required a lot of time (hence why I had very little extra time for writing and working more than 40 hours a week these past few years). The finish line for the PhD is now firmly in my sights, and it feels AMAZING. The work has been way more fun and interesting than I expected, too. I won’t finish until 2023, but believe me when I say it feels close now! Having only one year left in a four year process means it feels real.

The family is doing well, too. I don’t tend to talk too much about my husband and daughter on here, but since we’re talking about personal things and this is a blog, I’d like to share that they are the joys of my life. My daughter is four years old now, and she is such a love. Her sassiness is a constant delight, and she is growing and changing into such a strong little woman. I am so very proud of her. She is just about to start Pre-K in the fall, and we are excited to see her grow and develop more and more. My husband and I have always been adventurous types, and now that our daughter is getting older and more independent, we are getting to go on more adventures as a family. Reconnecting in that way feels amazing, and I am so lucky to have such a supportive husband that has endless patience with my simultaneous projects.

The Cave:

Book 4 of the In Caves and Catacombs Series

Work is continuing on the final edits for The Cave, as well. It’s the kind of thing where I have to write/edit three pages per day, every day, but I’m doing it (mostly) faithfully. This upcoming novel a very personal work for me, and I’ll blog more about its significance later… but for now, here’s the description:

When Maggie finds herself imprisoned at Real Impact, a boot camp for troubled teens in the Mexican high desert, she begins to question whether she will ever go home again. But then she and four others are unexpectedly freed, and she learns the world she once knew has been forever changed by the disastrous HORPOV-25 pandemic. Guided by Abigail, Emma, and other survivors of Real Impact, Maggie embarks on a journey to discover what it means to survive in a terrifying new world—and in the process, finds a young boy named Valentino who changes everything.

In California, Warren and April continue to head south on a quest to find April’s biological son. They are joined by their newfound friend Damian and his dog, Wolf. Along the way, they find signs of a threat that may have deep ties to April’s past. And as they draw ever-closer to Valentino, their worlds collide with Maggie’s in an unexpected way.

I am truly excited to publish this as my first full-length novel. It’s hard to imagine that I’ll be saying goodbye (probably?!?) to these characters after this as it is supposed to be the fourth and final novel in the series. So much has gone into this novel and series, and I’ve grown so much as a writer in the process. Publishing will be very cathartic.

Maybe after The Cave is published in June (it’s available for pre-order right now!) I’ll take a nice long break to finish my dissertation. More probably, I’ll be too energized by the launch to relax and I’ll dive into the next project… the one that started it all: By Scion and Sea, Book 1 of the Efrenen Sea series. More about that to come.

It is a privilege to be able to spend so much of my free time writing. It hardly feels like work when it’s so much fun! So thank you, dear readers, for your patience as I finish The Cave. I hope that it brings you as much joy to read as it has been to write!

I thought I was a gamer

I came to a conclusion about my identity the other day that was a bit surprising. I've always considered myself to be a gamer. A gamer "light", if you will. I started with my first Gameboy in the 90s, and continued with early Apple computer games (Lode Runner, especially), and then progressed to the life-changing Nintendo 64 (Zelda, what what!).

After that, I started playing games like Age of Empires, where I could design and explore my own kingdoms, or Petz, which allowed me to create my own cat and dog breeds and customize my own "house" (backgrounds where the animals romped around, in essence). But what really lit my 14-year-old fire was my introduction to online role-playing games with "Vampires! The Dark Alleyway".

"Vampires!" was very basic mechanically: I'd click these dark squares to "move" through the city, clicking white underlined text to drink the blood of humans or other vampires I encountered. But where the game came to life was across Yahoo group forums, where self-proclaimed "clans" of vampires would write pages and pages describing their movements around the city, envisioning their characters and locations, and detailing their interactions that other players could then play off of, adding to the script. There were wars, marriages, clan raids, vendettas... and I continued seeking out games like that, ending up in SecondLife, where you can be anything, meet anyone, travel anywhere.

I thought all of that made me a gamer. That, and Grand Theft Auto and Halo and Guitar Hero and Archeage and other WoW-style MMORPGs (and too many other games to list). But I've come to realize that the games that most captured my attention were the ones that allowed me creative freedom. The bigger the world, the more invested I became in my adopted identity. And it wasn't because I'm a gamer by nature. It's because I'm a writer. And that identity has always felt too big, too lofty to aspire to.

I'm beginning to come around and accept my identity as a writer. The more I put down the games, the more I focus on honing my craft, and fitting into that role. The same inspiration that made me click that white, underlined "drink" button, the same imagination that allowed me to visualize the human brought to their knees in front of me, that's what fuels my writing.

Identities change. And it's very rewarding to find yourself proud of your identity when you finally realize it fits.