The last time I wrote a blog post, I was in the middle of finishing up my first novel, We Grow Immortal.

I’ve tried to write post after post since then, but I ended up rambling for pages and I finally realized I was doing it for myself, not for anyone who might want to read about writing. I’ll do some catching up in bullet points, hopefully sticking to the things that really changed my writing habits.

• I was revising my book.
• My dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was awful. He died and my soul was broken.
• I published my book about a month after he passed, but it was hard to get back to writing.
• About 8 months later, I finally started to do a little writing and then Covid happened. The chaos with my job as a teacher was … overwhelming, he said politely.
• During all of the school/Covid struggles, I was diagnosed with Barrett’s esophagus, but not before it almost killed me.
• I was sleeping for 15 minutes here and there and waking up over and over and over and over feeling like I was choking to death all night. I lost 30 pounds because eating with my throat feeling so closed up felt impossible.
• My wife saved my life by making me go to all the doctors I needed to see.
• I needed CT scans, MRIs, blood tests, an EGD, and other scopings. 
• I was prescribed a change in diet, a special formulation of Prilosec, and countless other medications to address the stress put on my entire system. 
• I eventually stopped taking almost all of the medications finally and while the issue isn’t solved, it’s become much more manageable.
• I’m writing again. 

I know that with school starting back up in a few weeks that I might not be writing as much as I want, but the important thing is that I’m starting to WANT to write again. In the middle of all the mess listed above, I did publish another short story, Their Sinister Beauty, but it was something that I had mostly finished before things got too crazy with my dad, and looking back, it’s amazing to me that I managed to accomplish even that.

In any case, I’m dusting off my notebooks, polishing up my fountain pens, reorganizing all of my computer files, and FINISHING things that I started what seems like a hundred years ago. I hope some of you will still have the time and interest to check out my new stories as they arrive, hopefully in the near future.