AGES (perhaps gemerations) ago, I swore I would not post any more cliff hangers... I would not post any more until my tales were DONE - and could be dribbled out regularly.

I shot myself in the foot with that promise (which I still - regrettably - stand by)

While I have PILES of stuff on my desktop.... none of my open tales are ....done.

So I remain mute - and SO so frustrated.

A} Not dead

B} Thanks to the muse ....and my stupid promise... may as WELL be :-(

I continue to strugle - in solitude.

F**k you, Muse!

I felt really guilty posting so sporadically, so I swore to myself (and maybe some readers in DMs) that I would keep my wrangling with personal demons to myself until I actually FINISHED my god-cursed stories and posted the rest up until the end.

....seemed like a good idea at the time....

but as I wrote... diversions/digressions developed and I felt like one of those characters in an old horror film (say, poltergeist) running down the hall as it just kept getting longer and she found herself losing ground!

So. My conundrum:

I refuse to believe in 'Writer's Block'. Here's my devious cheat. (Wish me luck)

sigh.

While I continue to struggle with advancing the three open tales I have on BCTS, I decided to stall for time and try to make a case that I was not in fact deceased.... (perhaps, at worst brain-dead ....or suffering from dormant muse syndrome) by posting something entirely different.

The good news is that it is self contained and should leave no reader with a case of "And then....?" syndrome.

Thanks to all the folks who P.M.'d me. ....kind of a 'wellness check'.

I'm fine. My muse..... seems to be M.I.A.

Against my better judgement, I'm a few keystrokes away from posting the stuff I've been holding back. It feels forced and ...not good enough.... to post.

Still, the need to prove that I haven't been 'slacking off' is overpowering my lack of confidence in the stuff I'm ....laboriously... cranking out. When entwined with the muse, things just ....flowed.

Haha - I sat at my PC intending advancing my 3 narrative items but hit -- typing issues

After 'crunching the issue' I noticed a strip 'a keys - the #9 key, the "o", "l" and period key were suddenly dead!

I thought of trying to write avoiding the consonant, vowel, digit and punctuation, but the challenge proved too daunting

...as the last sentence proves.

I think I promised/threatened a long, long time ago that I would not post anything new for either of my two open tales - Secondhand Life and Summer of Love, until I had finished everything offline and had a complete story to dribble out at regular intervals.

I had no idea how hard that promise/threat would be to keep.

(Major writer navel-gazing follows)

I can't believe how long it has been since I posted anything new on either of the two stories I have ongoing here.

That said. My advice is to wait a bit before picking either Secondhand Life or Summer of Love up again.

It will take a few installments to get some momentum back.

Actually, she doesn't really need to be a twin. And the 'evil' thing could be a hindrance...

Maybe a simple clone would do...

You know those sitcoms where the protagonist has to attend a swank business function that turns out to be exactly the same time and on the other side of town from her best friends bachelorette party or birthday celebration or somesuch? So of course, she decides she can juggle both and hilarity ensues.

I'm still waiting for the hilarity to ensue.

I finally closed the book on one of the three ongoing stories I'm juggling.

And I breathed a sigh of relief that I only had two tales to attend to...

(Apologies. I embrace alliteration when exhausted)

...but this clean space on my virtual desk is now becoming the itch that must not be scratched....

I've been dying to write a sci-fi (ish) first-contact story for a while now.

Of course it has a TG element, or I wouldn't be mentioning it here. ;-)

The longer I resist, the stronger the urge to start becomes.

I think I painted myself into a corner with Dead Ringer, and the only way I could think to get out of it was to go a lot more 'action thriller' than I originally intended.

Hope I'm not TOO treading water here

Moving 'Dead Ringer' and Summer of Love along ever-so-slightly.

It feels more like a tease .... an appetizer without a meal.

....The meal's still on the stove...

I'm confident that it will still be a meal, but (much like the traditional Thanksgiving Dinner) it's more an aroma and a promise than the eventual fulfillment.

Still, I promise a fulfillment.

I just haven't worked out how to get from the bag-full-of-groceries to the inevitable food-coma yet, ;-)

But, I have no doubt that I WILL....

K@

"...As I was saying...." (Google it if you're under a certain age or not a fan of ancient television)

I'm mortified that my last fiction updates were nearly 3 months ago.

Yes, I've been having 'muse troubles' (she vanished without a trace, leaving me to slog along on my own), but I managed to eke out a bit more of both Dead Ringer and Summer of Love.

Argh!

I finished Rumspringa - for better or worse - and now have only the dark, kinda bleak, vaguely cyperpunk morality tale that is Dead Ringer rattling around my head.

I am beginning to think my 'muse' must be the evil twin of the Sandman. I should be sleeping (I have work in the morning) but instead I'm writing. :-(