Honestly, this is not really a surprise at this point: I gain and lose motivation over time. I’ve gotten better at consistency in spite of it, but the underlying oomph still very much goes in waves.
It’s been a rough year in a death-by-a-thousand-cuts sort of way, though of course, that’s all relative to one’s frame of reference. We’re still alive and we have a home, but life is stressful right now. In particular, a long-running, background health concern turned into a foreground concern, as a body part I don’t actually need decided to riot / melt down / freak out. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, although it will take a string of tests running up to the procedure and some recuperation afterward. In the meantime, I’m tired, stressed, and holding on until the next round of tests. Because there is a chance it’s something even more scary than a rogue body part, and until I get that all-clear, I’m going to worry. It’s what I do. [edit from the future: I got the all-clear. Not Cancer(tm)! Woohoo!]
Lately I have been pushing myself to write The Serious Fiction, because those readers have had to wait long enough, and there are more of them than for The Silly Fiction. But while it’s going (slowly), I don’t think I can spare the energy to pour into pushing myself. As long as something (anything) gets written, that might have to be good enough.
All of which is to say that I’ve started writing Therapist again, specifically the Bard College story featuring Greta, Henry, and Burleigh from book 3. Will it end up being finished as quickly as the others? Heck if I know. But it’s something. And I’m deciding that “something” is good enough.
Amazon has started a beta trial of AI-voiced audiobooks. First, fuck you, pay narrators; second, I care about my readership enough not to charge them for bullshit robot voices when you can use bullshit robot Read Aloud features for free. Third, fuck you, pay narrators. 🙂
The screening process has pointed out that some of the table of contents in my catalog are effed up, so I will use it to troubleshoot that. And then not take the greed-bait.
Therapist book 6 (Berry’s, Starting Over in Another World with My Level 99 Self-Doubt) is still in cover limbo. 🙂 Hey, the title designer is doing me a favor here.
Book 7 came back from the beta readers (thank you!!!), so it’s in the pipeline. After an evening hammering away at a thesaurus, the working title has morphed into The Salty Mageknight and the Sweet Dark Lord. For a minute it was The Spicy Courtship of the Salty Mageknight and the Sweet Dark Lord, but I don’t need agita from the type of reader who would take “spicy” literally. It’s not spicy even by TikTok standards.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Both are still coming. Eventually. Fate willing, so is Healers 4, someday. I will do my goddamn utmost, because this is what I love to do.