As many of you already know, because of Covid (*angry muttering sounds*), work (lots of OT), and other things going on in my life I had to kinda "tap out" on my writing for a while, and even posted about it on this blog.  In fact, I haven't been able to touch my books since April 14th it seems.  Yes, that's how crazy it's been.  It's been pretty much 10 weeks that I've been unable to write, and the itch to write, combined with the lack of time to do it, is driving me up a wall.  However, due to an interesting shift at work over the last week or so, that hiatus may not be lasting much longer.  Why do I say that?  Well, presently we're so busy that I've been doing 60+ hour weeks back to back to back to keep up with, and knock down the backlog.

And that's to no fault of our own.  We got hit with numerous issues (a bunch of which Cpanel created for us.  Gee, thanks guys, we really appreciate it, NOT!) that all hit at around the same time, or were back to back to back (ie, we'd clear one issue, or be close to doing so, and the next would show up, further putting us behind) which then put us further behind.  Again, this was to no fault of our own.  We just happened to be the focal point of bad luck for a couple months.  Or I should say, it wasn't our bad luck that caused the mess.  We were just unlucky enough to be caught in the blowback when they did happen.

*sigh*  Such is the life of tech.  I mean, in my line of work, when stuff like this happens, it doesn't matter who you work for or what they do, you're getting backed up and backlogged no matter what happens, and these kind of events are more often not your fault, but rather the consequences of someone else's bad choices.  But anyhow, tech ranting aside, let me get to the main point of this post.  As I was saying before, due to all these things hitting around the same time, I was forced to set my writing aside for a time, mostly because I didn't have the time, nor the energy (60+hr weeks just flat out kill you just about), to work on them, especially given the incredible brain power that needs to be invested in each one to produce a quality work.

But, with things slowing down at work, and me actually able to take days off without negatively impacting my coworkers, it looks like I might be able to return to my normal weekends, either next week, or the week after.  I'm guessing the week after at this point (assuming nothing else blows up, ugh) since next week is a holiday week, and thus a short staffed week, meaning I'll still likely get asked to do more OT to cover for the shortfall.  But that's fine.  However, again, if we continue to dig ourselves out like we have been at work, normal weekends should return (my "weekends" are when I do 90% of my writing, thus why they're so important) meaning that I'll be able to get through the last couple edits of Offworld Chronicles 5 - Dark Wanderings either by August 1st (my soft deadline), or by the end of August at the latest.

Since books 6 and 7 are already written, the only thing I need to do at that point, once 5 is released, is to get them cleaned up and released, likely on my next two release windows, those being Feb 2021, and August 2021.  Again, that's "life" permitting, but that's fine.  I understand that stuff happens.  Even so, I will continue to push forward in the hobby I love, and continue to bring all of you the books and stories you love. :)  As a side note, even though I have another series planned in the Offworld universe, my plans for it aren't going to be the same as this one was.  If there's anything I've learned from this series is, write the whole series first, THEN release it.  You have less issues with writing yourself in a corner that way. ^_^;;  So, my plans for that series is to sit down, rough out the entire series first, then start figuring out release dates.

In the meantime, I plan to pivot back to my other series and do a couple releases on them first.  Earthfleet is one of those.  I currently have "The Specimen" and "Weaver's Forge" that are mostly done, and just need improvements and completions of the stories (they're incomplete rough drafts presently) before they are released.  The benefit of that is, since they're so far along, completing and releasing them on my normal publishing schedule, while working on "The Ember Chronicles" (current series working title only, but not sure I'll keep it as it might create confusion between the series) shouldn't be too hard.  But, as with all things in life, we'll see.  Anyhow, just wanted to keep all of you informed on how things are going.

My eventual goal, should God smile favorably on this desire, and should it be His will for me, I eventually want to write full time.  IE, be an author for a living.  But, we shall see.  Even if I can't be, I still intend to continue writing until I'm no longer able to write anymore. :)