The words of Valerie Griswold-Ford

I’m writing again. I’m also starting to venture slowly into poetry, which is weird, because I never thought of myself as a poet. But Amber introduced me to Rupi Kuhr, and I am in love with words again. She is amazing and wonderful and I highly recommend her to all people. Even if you think you don’t like poetry. This, to me, is more thoughts in motion than anything else.

I’m also working on books. I’m getting myself back into Advent, and will be re-releasing last year’s unfinished story in July, along with the ending. So this year you get two Advents! Because Molly and Schrodinger will be back in December as well. I’m also releasing Winter Storms, the second book in the Carter’s Cove series, this year. So much Molly! My mother’s smiling, I know she is.

I’m working on a few other things too. I’ve got an odd short story that I’m working on finishing up, about ghost helpers and the little shop they run. And I’ve finally started to work on Resonant Frequencies, which I’m hoping to submit to Viable Paradise in a month. If I don’t get it to the shape I want it to by the deadline, I’ll continue to work on it and go for next year. This year is the year of me doing things to push myself. Reconnect with myself.

I’m also still playing with Shanna and Talia but that’s kind of on hold. I’m trying to get my world bibles in order (using Archivos, which is amazing and you should all look into it) and so I’m doing more of worldbuilding than anything else. She will be getting her story. I promise. Just not right now. Both of them. And Faerytale Princess as well. I have so many stories, guys. So very many stories.

OH! And I’m going to be doing some book reviews too on here! First up, once I finish it, is Perils of Prague by Doc Coleman. Steampunky goodness. I can’t wait. Yes, I will be doing others, but I’m not sure what ones yet.

Finally, I’m starting to do The Artist’s Way again. I’ve decided that I’m not going to be online after 9 pm ET most nights, so I can keep my sleep habits healthy. My evenings are going to be spent writing by hand, since that’s something that feels comfortable to me.  More as I come up with it.

Art by Deviant Artist sdavis75

I’m working on Seeds again today, and I found this lovely piece of art to inspire me. While it’s not precisely what The Frontier looks like, but it’s very close, and I can see this beauty sailing the Cosmic Web. Today was a lot of figuring out the gods and magic and the history of the empire – turns out that they’re refugees from Earth (I know, shocking, right?) but that their gods are the Greek Gods. Who decided after that whole Trojan War debacle that humans really shouldn’t have the gods interfering in anything. But they’ve left Essences behind, and the humans can use that to do all sorts of fascinating things.

I’ll have more later, but right now, I’m off to look at some things in the studio. I’m doing my morning pages again, and making all sorts of plans for Ravencon. Will I see you in Richmond in April?

I’ve started my morning pages again, because I’m feeling the need to write in the morning, but my brain isn’t really speaking to me except in nasty tones, so I figure if it has the chance to spew itself out in my journal before I have to see people, I can actually function. This is the aim. We’ll see how it works in practice. We’re coming up on the second anniversary of my mother’s death, and I loathe the time change (seriously, who thought this was a good idea????), and it’s still winter and I hate snow and cold and grey. So yes, my depression is solidly entrenched and I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, because then I have to adult, and adulting sucks.

Also, I usually have a Bear purring in bed with me in the morning, and the cat gravity of a 26-lb cat is immense. We’re talking Jupiter-scale. But sadly, my bills won’t be paid if I don’t get up.

So I was working on my morning pages this morning, and found a new character that I am also documenting here, because I want to write something about her. She’s a middle-aged woman (yep, me, totally me), and she lives with a bunch of cats who happen to be demons. Like, real demons, and they’re supposed to be tormenting her, but since demons have to conform to your perception of what they look like, she perceives them as cats, and they kind of like it. So she’s a crazy cat lady who isn’t actually crazy, and her demons have to go out and do demon things occasionally and then they come back, and she bandages their wounds and feeds them and snuggles them, and demons like to purr. I don’t know much more, but she totally knows they’re demons, and they know she knows, and they’re all pretty okay with it.

Now that I’ve gotten that down in several places so I don’t lose it, I’m going to look at resubmitting Requiem and then keep working on the prewriting for Seeds.