Yesterday was just a little bit rough, with the combination of medicines having an adverse reaction that both made my stomach turn, and dropped my blood pressure to a dangerous level. Both of those issues were resolved safely and without need for a visit to the E.R. thankfully, and this morning I have to admit I’m feeling pretty good all in all. It probably has to do with this being the first time in two months that I’ve truly been able to “feel” like Zoe inside and out. Let me explain. :-)

Let me start by saying, I'm sorry I worried everyone. I really and truly mean that. I'm going through a lot of crap right now in the real world, but I promise it's been worth it, even if I'm more uncertain now about myself than I've ever been.

I can't promise that any of this will make any sense at all to anyone else; it sure as hell doesn't make any sense in my head right now. It's been a lot of jumbled, raw emotions.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to be out of pocket for awhile. I don't know how long exactly. I'm going with my parents to see the Grand Canyon, and since we're going to drive it, it's going to end one of three ways.

Those of you following my main novels, Becoming Robin and Boys Don't Cry have probably noticed I haven't been very active lately. Part of that is that this is storm season, and since I usually do my writing in the evening, that's put a big halt to using the main PC. I finally got Windows 7 on my laptop though I still need to find my MS Office disc for that.

I'm fairly certain I've blogged extensively in the past about how music tends to affect my muse in strange ways, but I just had probably the best example ever of this phenomenon while working on Boys Don't Cry today (Don't worry, I'm still working on Robin too :-) She'll be back soon).

So as I'm staring at my stories page, I noticed that Becoming Robin is 4 hits away from 10,000. The next closest is chapters 2 and 3 at around 6.5k so of course hits don't mean much :-) But since Robin is technically one year old at this point (Though her 1 year anniversary is in a couple of weeks) I thought I'd post something appropriate.

Alright, so I'm not going to just post a picture of myself for anyone who clicks on TopShelf to have access to, but is there anyone out there with experience in color flow charts that would mind taking a look and telling me if my assessment (Deep Winter, though I used to be more of an Autumn) is far off?

I'm not just talking about things like "Men hunt, women clean and have babies" here, either.

Growing up in the South, in a very small, backwater community, I was exposed to a lot of what look in retrospect, to be downright stupid social stigmas.

What got me thinking about this was reading a popular story on LGTales about a boy who starts practicing ballet. If I had had that open to me - i.e. if I had been born a girl here, or just plain born anywhere else, I would be in a lot better physical shape today.

WARNING: This is going to be long, and perhaps a little nonsensical/cyclical. I'm pouring it all out into text to get it out of my system, but I promise it has a happy ending.

Depression sucks. I know that's stating an obvious fact, but I ended up giving myself a swift kick in the rear today, so I needed to write about it because that's why I started blogging in the first place, over two years ago. I want to be able to look back at this and laugh someday. Call me conceited, but I also want to stand as another reminder to others that no one suffers alone.

While on a fruitless search to figure out what I've done with my digital audio recorder, I started to run across stuff I've been holding onto for absolutely no reason. Most of it was just useless junk not even worth mentioning, but it eventually turned into spring cleaning. And then I noticed my old "I'm just a crossdresser, really!" stash.

A Letter From the Author:

Hi everyone,

I'm going to start by saying that Book Three is by no means finished. I have the first six chapters pretty much 'ready' after two months of hard work. As I move forward, I'm going to be taking greater care in my writing than I have in the past.

So, something's come up in my life as potentially very, VERY positive. I just don't know if it's a step in the right direction or not.

I found out through, of all people, the mother of someone I went to school with and haven't seen in years, that there are special services for the blind for adults now, who can teach me a trade and help me get a job with the US Government. It would apparently all be paid for too.

The caveat is that I'd have to live in Little Rock. ;-)

... It's freaking cold! :-P

Our pipes are trying to freeze, and we're doing all that we can to keep that from happening, but if no one hears from me for a couple of days, don't worry! We have gas heating, so we'll be just fine even if we should lose power :-) Hopefully the worst is over for us, but just in case, you know?

Those of you like me who are being hit by this 30-state strong storm (the figure provided by Headline News' Robin Meade), or worse, please be safe, don't take unnecessary risks in traveling, and stay warm!

~Zoe

In a storyline that could have come right out of TopShelf, Disney's Wizards of Waverly Place now features a transgendered character, in a roundabout way.

For those not familiar with the series, it's about a family of wizards living in the modern world and how they cope with everyday situations.

One of the staple characters, Max, was inadvertently magically transformed into a young girl, "Maxine", on the last episode. The promo "and she might be sticking around awhile" is what amused me enough to finally post about it.

First, to get the site business out of the way, I had hoped to have Robin posted up by now, but a mild case of food poisoning has kept me in bed. You can't keep a good author down, though. I think my muse is finally returning from her vacation, so we'll see what happens :-)

I do want to wish everyone a very happy New Year. I was going to post a blog on my two year anniversary of signing on with TopShelf;I'm only a few days late! It sounds harsh, but glad the holidays are finally over for another year.