16 January 2024:

I LIIIIIVVEEE!!!

All jokes aside, I'm thankful for my rather annoying habit of multiple file backups. The chromebook I had bought to take the place of my ancient MacBook died, mid chapter. Thankfully, I set autosave to run at 1 minute of inactivity, backed everything up to an external drive before shutting down daily, and sent to multiple cloud platforms at the same time. Riders has NOT been forgotten, just sidelined by life. The story still runs through my head and tiny blurbs sit in the text  notes on my phone until I have a chance to get another computer. It will be completed, eventually.

UPDATE:  6th January 2022

Saw a quote recently that is quite fitting...

"There are three types of writers:

1) those who plot their books

2) those who discover their plot along the way

3) those who know what will happen but their book is a bit feral still, needs a bath, has bitten and will bite again."

While I know fanfic isnt a book, it IS most certainly the work of a writer.  At this point, I find myself firmly in that third camp.  I have been bitten several times by my dust covered, very much in need of a bath chapters, recently.  Riders is now a multi year campaign between insecurity and active imagination.  I know where it's going, just as I know where all of my characters have been.  Sometimes the words want to flow until I reach my keyboard, then they hide at the edges of my thoughts and are completely unwilling to cooperate.  As I read back over previous chapters, I find places where I may have missed something that comes into play later in the story...  At some point, those little bits will be worked in, either through chapter rewrites as I grow irritated by the lack of aforementioned bits, or by way of flashbacks at an appropriate moment.  Currently, I find myself in the midst of a re-read to attempt to work in plot bunnies that have invaded my thoughts and made themselves comfortable.  This may involve additions to older chapters...  Not entirely sure though, because we're not there yet!  Rest assured, Riders On The Storm will not be abandoned!  It's just being stubborn-- much like a certain dog.  Still. :)

My apologies to anyone who had taken to my sometimes senseless tale... Life had thrown me for a bit of a loop and I'd thought time had come to let the next chapters wander from my brain. Alas, it was not to be... on July 26th, my dear father, in a rather unexpected manner, shuffled off his mortal coil. My daughter and I attended his final ride, and within a mere 12 hours of returning home were planning yet another goodbye... My ex (yet still legally bound) husband, my baby girl's daddy, also bid us farewell in a rather unexpected manner. (Both suffered, though not long, massive heart attacks. Take nothing for granted... tomorrow isn't promised, merely hinted.)  I am still in a state of shock and find myself battling the bottle almost daily, if I don't just sleep... not to worry, my little one isn't neglected for my mental state- she comes first in all things. By which I mean my battles are ignored while she needs.

About me?  Well....  I tend to think I'm hilarious. I'm snarky and sarcastic, sometimes to the point of cruelty...  But then I do feel bad about it afterward.  Not much, mind you, but I do feel bad.  A little. My filter is broken and my censor quit- the pay wasn't high enough for all the crap she had to put up with. So my language is frequently a bit.... colorful.

Seriously, though. I'm a 36yo single mom of an amazingly bright (and super annoying, lol) 7yo, recently out of a psychologically abusive 16 year marriage, and the healthiest of my coping mechanisms has been to escape into the lovely worlds made available by fan fiction. I do write, but I'm not usually open to sharing. Currently, I'm writing a story that I feel confident enough in to seriously consider sharing with the world.  This world, at least. It's not the first fanfic I've written, but it IS the first in this particular fandom. (The others were pure crap and I deleted the files before they could be read by anyone with a brain.) All that said, I'm off to write some more!