Anxiety, Heartburn, and New Meds! Oh My!

 November has been a long month. Like really long. The longest month in the history of months. Ok, I'm probably being dramatic. It's fine. I've been struggling with the anxiety ratcheting up for a while now, but man.. it's gotten so bad. That's where the new meds come in. They are supposed to be super awesome and will help me a ton... I just have to get through the intro period. I'm going back and forth between sleeping 16 hours a day and 4 hours a day. Basically, whenever I'm awake... I'm exhausted. More than exhausted. Barely human really. That has finally started to lessen, but now the heartburn is setting in. It's so terrible. I've always had acid reflux. I have so many treatments at my disposal for it... they are not working. So I feel like I have a pool ball lodged in my throat. It's so great. I'm so excited about it. I learned that sucking on something helps. Guess who has had a caramel hard candy in their mouth almost constantly all day to avoid the pain? Not me eating an entire bag of candy today 🙃

OK! On to other thing now. Due to... the previous paragraph... NaNo basically didn't happen. I mean, it did, and if you go to the profile there, it will tell you I completed it, but I didn't hit my goal of 125k. I barely broke 50k. Which, lemme tell you, isn't making me feel super great with the whole anxiety thing. However, my Eternal Keeper of Time and Eternal Confused Cookie Goddess have informed me I have to give myself grace. That I need to accept that life happened and it's ok to not be where I had planned to be. My mom and C.O. agree. Now, the trick is to get my anxiety to agree to those terms (spoiler: it's not going well.) 

I've done some organizing in my life. I mean, I had some of this done before, but I've been working on modifications to it. I have a writing schedule planned out until like... the end of 2026. I already have names for the rest of the Justified series books! I also already found a series to work start writing once I wrap up the Justified series. The thought of that is bittersweet. I'm excited to see it come to a close, but at the same time... I really love being with these characters. I'm hoping once I have the remaining books finished, I will have closure with them, but we'll see. It will end at four novels and two anthologies.

I'm going to be messing with the formatting of the post schedule here. Every two weeks might be a thing until the end of the year, but I'd like to get back to weekly posts. I like them. I just don't have the content for that right now. Getting more put together has been harder with everything going on, so I finally reached the end of the line (aside from excerpts, which I pull as I'm writing). I'm also going to try to get back to making these weekly-whatevers.... actually weekly. 

I'm on Insta now!! You can find me at _falling.in.place_ I try to post something every couple of days, but it depends on what else is happening. So, go follow me there!

Ok, I need to work on things. December is going to be busy as hell for me as I try to get this ship righted again. 

One more thing... HOW BOUT THOSE LIONS!!!! 8-3 BABY!! 8-3!!! that is all

Until next week ♥

Matchstick Excerpt 11: The Choice

There wasn’t a magic signature at all. Whatever this was, it wouldn’t blow up if I touched it. I carefully opened the door. It was a piece of fabric, roughly cut, that had been rolled up and laid across the floorboards. I glanced around quickly to make sure no one was paying attention to me. I carefully unrolled it. I didn’t want to alert anyone else just yet. No need to send everyone running if they didn’t need to. There was a note and a couple of pictures attached to it.

You are not as smart as you think you are, it said across the top.

Underneath it were Polaroids of Arthur and me from today. One from each location we’d been to except this one. My jaw clenched. I was tired of this bullshit.

Tick Tock. Who will you save? was scrawled across the bottom.

My heart dropped, and my hands started to shake as I tossed the fabric square back in the car.

“She knows we are all here,” I said frantically. “There was a note in my car. It asked me who I was going to save.”

“I haven’t seen anything on the cameras,” Elise said.

“I’ll come to you,” Mel said. “I can get my car later. Arthur put a call into Annabell. We need to bail.”

“I’m not calling her. I’m going to her. If they know we’re here, there’s no need to pretend,” he said.

It sounded like he was jogging. As his breathing picked up, so did my heart rate. I was paralyzed. I didn’t know where to go or who would need it. These games made me want to scream. She was always a step ahead of us, playing with our lives.

“There wasn’t a picture of Mel,” I said quietly.

“What?” Elise and Arthur said.

“There wasn’t a picture of Mel,” I said louder. “Bethany doesn’t know she is here. Don’t come to me, we need to go to them. It asked me who I would save.”

Just as I started moving toward them, two shots rang out. Arthur cursed and dropped off the call.

(All excerpts are taken from a lightly edited first draft. Contents are subject to change or may be removed from the final novel entirely.)

Moonlight and Honey

I've been struggling with my anxiety a lot lately. It's gotten pretty bad. To help deal with it, I'm changing my meds. I think it will be good, but it can take 2-4 weeks for them to truly take hold. So, I've been a little bit of a mess. But it's fine. This is fine... To ease some of the things I'm trying to maintain right now, I've changed the blog schedule. The weekly whatever posts will still be weekly (mostly), but the extras and excerpts are now going out every two weeks instead of every week. It gives me more time to be on top of things. I might change it back once I get everything on track again, we'll see. 

SO! I wanted things to make me happy. Today, I bought three new candles!! Moonlight and honey is the name of one of them. It smells so good!!The other two are applewood and incense and sea and land.  The jars are pretty, the scents are pretty, and I'm very happy I decided to buy them today. I'm sitting here right now (on Thursday??) writing this while the moonlight and honey candle burns. 

I haven't written anything yet today, so I'm going to finish this up and then go do that. The goals for NaNo this time around require about 4k words a day. That may or may not sound like a lot. I'm here to tell you... it's a lot. I work better under some pressure. Usually. Unless it's too much pressure and I push through while having a breakdown. It's hard to say. BUT! The words will get written today. 

The thing with drafts is they don't have to be good. First drafts just... aren't good. They aren't necessarily bad (but they can be, or at least have really bad parts), but they just aren't good. The writing process is messy as hell. Ideas show up and they sound great and you write them and you're like, "OMG I LOVE IT!!" aaaaand then you realize it broke like eight other parts of the book and have to figure out what to do about it. When I wrote my first book it took me a very long time. I was convinced it needed to be written the way it would be published. That everything needed to be smooth and polished as I went. That I needed to stop and edit along the way to make sure I was going in the right direction. Rage was the same way in the beginning. I've let that go, mostly, and now I can write the books in about a month. That just means drafting months have a tight schedule. If I miss a day of writing I'm 4k words behind. I just have to keep up with it. 

Football starts soon. I'm not super invested in this particular game (but the Bears are in my division, so I care a little, even though they are very... not good). So I'm going to go write and watch football and enjoy my cheesecake (my birthday was Monday!) and bask in my candle. Tonight will be a good night. Because I said so damnit. 

Until next week ♥

Lyrics in my head:

I've been having a hard time adjusting 

I had the shiniest wheels, now they're rusting 

I didn't know if you'd care if I came back

I have a lot of regrets about that 

Pulled my car off the road to the lookout 

Could've followed my fears all the way down 

And maybe I don't quite know what to say

But I'm here in your doorway

Matchstick Excerpt 10: The Fire

(Aaaaaaand, this POV is a secret for now!)

I lifted my hand in thanks and walked back to the sidewalk. Annabell was giggling with that same guy still. It looked like she wasn’t doing anything but flirting. It was a good play. Anyone looking in wouldn’t see anything else. Pretty girl flirting with a firefighter. Not unstoppable warrior gets information from a firefighter. After seeing all the magic last night, I was sure she had the most of it. I wanted to ask, but I knew better. I’d learn more from watching than talking.

“Definitely set by an elemental,” she said softly as she stopped in front of me. “It was pushed through the wall into the bedroom. That’s also why it was so intense in there.”

“I have pictures of everything from every angle, but there is something I want you to look at right now.”

I pulled up the pictures of the weird marks and showed them to her. She tipped her head back and forth and squinted her eyes, but she had no answer either.

“Where was it leading?”

“Toward that yard,” I said, pointing it out to her.

“Someone was over there, but I can’t tell exactly what made this mark like that.”

“I’m going over there then,” I said.

“You are going to draw a bunch of attention to us,” she hissed.

“To me. I will be drawing attention to me. I’m just a nosey human with a vague connection with the family living here. I’m from Florida. I don’t have a record of criminal activity. I don’t have magic. And, if anyone looks, I was accepted to law school with a fantastic LSAT score but didn’t end up attending.”

“Law school?”

“Yes. I’m full of surprises. Now, I’m going over there.”

I turned on my heel and walked away from her. I had to be useful if I wanted to survive all of this. I walked over to the neighbor’s house. I should have knocked on their door and asked to poke around. I’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission.

I walked into their backyard without looking back. I looked around for any sign of anything. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. Finding the lock on the shed was broken didn't take long. I was afraid to open the door, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

I slipped the door open slowly. I could see a foot. I took a deep breath and opened it the rest of the way. I wasn’t sure how he would react to seeing me here. 

(All excerpts are taken from a lightly edited first draft. Contents could be changed or removed from the final novel completely.)

ARE. YOU. READY!!

 NaNo is officially here!! It feels good to be writing new words again. Editing isn't my favorite, but I know that's where the story happens. That is the place where the idea turns into a book proper. The writing process is kind of messy, and nothing is certain (for me anyway), so the editing is where the real magic is. Being away from writing new gets hard. It feels good to be at it again! Moonlit is now on it's way to being a real thing!! 

I've been in a kind of a weird place lately. As demonstrated by missing a few Thursday's in a row... I think some of it was anticipation anxiety for the writing of the things. It's something that's hard to explain. It's like being so excited it makes you anxious for it? lol I've been busy as hell, which I think helps and makes it worse all at the same time. The busy keeps me distracted, but can also push toward burnout. I'm working on finding a balance. 

I've found a new game to be obsessed with. It's called House Flipper? It's addicting as hell. The entire thing is about renovating houses. It's fairly realistic, too (sometimes too realistic lol). Not only have I been putting a lot of time into it, I've gotten my mom hooked on it! It's just kind of... relaxing. You can just decorate the houses and then move on to a new one. It's been great. 

I have a bunch more things to get accomplished. Hopefully everything falls into place and the entire month of November goes smoothly. Is that asking for too much? 

Until next week ♥

Lyrics in my head: 

Didn't they tell us, 'don't rush into things' 

Didn't you flash your green eyes at me

Didn't you calm my fears with a Cheshire Cat smile 

Ooh didn't it all seem new and exciting 

I felt your arms twistin around me

It's all fun and games, til somebody loses their mind

But darling

We found wonderland, you and I got lost in it

And we pretended it could last forever 

AND 

Remember when we couldn't take the heat 

I walked out and said, 'I'm setting you free' 

But the monsters turned out to be just trees 

When the sun came up you were looking at me