A question I've been asking myself fairly often the last few days. Unfortunately, the answer is, as usual, stalled by Real Life.

I've just been too busy, although I have found the time to write. It is just that things are fragmented right now and it's difficult to concentrate.

First thing: What Milsy Did has been a lot harder to write than I expected, since it requires some insane levels of co-ordination with most of the other Anmar stories. I can do it, and I have been doing it, but it requires significant research which only serves to disrupt the mental writing flow.

I have now reached the point where WMD and SEE properly overlap and it has become much harder. If the two tales actually showed the same scenes from different viewpoints that wouldn't be so bad: I did that for the first three or four chapters of WMD before the various parties parted. Unfortunately Milsy has her own life and that needs to be carefully matched with what else is going on in the palace. Timing is everything.

Then there's Real Life. I have had a 'cold' since just before Christmas and I'm not certain the thing has gone away yet. Conditions were so bad just after New Year that I was forced to increase my steroid dosage to avoid complications, this has given me energy but obviously has other implications. I'm going to have a bone scan tomorrow, that's just one of the wonderful things long-term corticosteriod usage can do to you. (And yet another day spent not writing.)

Since Christmas I've also been struggling to do some computer software upgrades. I run basic Debian and you'd think it would be easy but no. I'm also running Xen and LTSP just to complicate matters. Nothing I tried worked properly and I don't know why. Still, the attempts have taken a lot of time and attention when I should have been doing other things.

I also have two aged parents. Mum (90) had a fall during December and was taken to a hospital 12 miles away from Dad (87). She has earlyish stages of dementia. He's so wobbly he can't get out on his own in case he collapses with low blood pressure. How he looked after her I don't know, but the stress wasn't helping his sanity. We made several day trips to visit him (95 miles) and then take him to the hospital to visit her (~12 miles).

My sister has been co-ordinating a rescue plan which involved moving her into a specialised care home while he went to a bungalow in a nearby town. Because she can't be left, even for a minute, and one person couldn't do it on their own, we ended up doing the transfer, which happened last week. That meant driving down to their house to pick up some of her clothing and then finding a hotel near the hospital. The next day we took her from Taunton to the care home which is near Fishguard in West Wales. Don't ask. It was a ~500-mile round trip with two stopovers and left us both very tired. (And eating out: I put on four pounds.)

So Milsy will progress, but at a much slower rate than before. I will continue posting chapters but they won't be at a regular(!) rate as I have been known to do previously. I promise that I will finish what I started, I just can't put a date to it yet.

And in other news, there will soon be a new Anmar tale! This one will be much easier to write since there are no complicated tie-ups with other stories and I have almost the whole storyline already outlined. Despite being new, most of the characters will be familiar to readers of the other stories.

You're thinking, "Why not finish Milsy first?" The answer is, that could be a long time and I need to get product out promptly. My brain is actually working on three other stories so it is essential to me that I get something down that is productive and get it out to my readers.

Thank you all for being so patient. Real Life can strike at any moment, be sure that you are appropriately prepared!

Penny