Wow. Yes, here I am, crawling out of the woodwork after a few days off from my blog. I’ve been active at Twitter, though more along the lines of tweet-and-run.

In addition to hunkering down and hammering away at Rose and Spindle, which I think is only about 20,000 words short of being completed, I’ve also been putting in some extra hours at work while daydreaming of somehow, someday, retiring and living off what I write.

Please emphasize daydream. As much as I enjoyed writing general fantasy stories, it’s stuff about gay teens that’s closest to my heart, and we all know how teeny-tiny that market is. The last three (or four) months were spent pretty much lost in a crisis of confidence and an insistent refusal to accept certain truths about my goals.

Though it took these bloggers a while to come and save the day, they eventually did, and as luck would have it, my much-needed “chicken soup for the niche writer’s soul” came within days of each other. If you’re a writer like me who’s wishing like all heck that you could do so much more with your niche fiction, here are some lovely articles to read, savor, absorb, and take comfort in:

I’m not waiting for permission anymore.
A Call to Arms
Pushing the Button
Using History as an Inspiration for Fantasy

Though I’d love to be at that point where Jude Hardin found himself, I simply have nothing to fall back to, financially, in order to make that feasible. That was a very sore point for me recently, especially after one of my co-workers retired to focus on his art. The issue got shoved front and center, and I couldn’t avoid facing it, no matter what, and boy, oh, boy, it was a downward spiral for me since.

A few things – in addition to those blog posts I shared – helped me find my way back, the most important being a renewed desire to carry on with the marathon after so many false starts and bitterly disappointing results in my attempts at picking up where I left off. I’d have to blame my own mental state for those awful moments, though. By and large, having latched on to what I thought to be failures in achieving certain goals I’ve always had an eye on, I couldn’t look at anything else without having a tainted view of it.

I feel a lot more relaxed now, especially after a number of successive evenings working on Rose and Spindle. Oh, and that’s another surprise for me.

It looks like I’m back to being productive at night again. I’ve blogged about my writing schedule issues before, and now I just have to accept that the midday isn’t good for me, no matter how conducive it is to concentrating with everyone out to work, etc. It’s just not the same as 10 pm and beyond, when everyone’s in bed, and it’s deathly quiet around me, including the internet.

I guess the good thing about it is that I can still be productive in the midday, but this time I get to concentrate on chores and especially on my fitness (cycling and some strength training), followed by some rest (reading!) and then writing.

Other things involving work and increasing fatigue are slowly being dealt with (again, much of this is mental, though the physical strain is very real). Things came to a head last month, when the shop offered free custom labor and so attracted a lot of customers with multiple artwork as well as rush jobs. I barely survived that lot, but things are starting to slow down a bit to a more comfortable pace, and I’m enjoying my work again. Even people at work are a lot more relaxed now, which really helps the morale bit.

Incidentally, this blog will undergo a few experiments regarding its theme. I tend to be pretty restless when it comes to my online home, and I also find those old, now-scoffed-at WordPress designs a lot of fun despite their limitations (i.e., fixed widths vs. responsive widths). I guess, after being belabored time and again over making my blog oh-so-pretty, I find those “old school” designs deliciously subversive.

So if you drop by my blog and see that it’s morphing into one theme after another, it’s not you. That’ll be me, going bonkers over custom upgrades and so on.