Rymellan Fiction: Joined

[EDIT: Joined is no longer available on the website. If you've been reading along, missed the last story, and would like to read it, contact me.]

I just posted the latest (and last) Rymellan story to the website. You can read Joined here.

After writing the series for four years, I’m looking forward to taking a break and focusing on other projects. I do expect to return to Rymel at some point.

Enjoy the story!

Feline Diabetes is a Bitch

I realized this morning that I haven’t posted to the blog yet this month. Time flies when you’re busy. Not only that, life threw us a curve ball. Nothing we can’t handle, but everything else fell by the wayside for a while.

A few weeks ago, one of our four cats was diagnosed with diabetes. We had a diabetic cat 10 years ago, so we weren’t completely blindsided, but it was still unwelcome news. Like humans with type 1 diabetes, cats require insulin shots. But they can’t inject themselves, and they need to be injected twice a day, roughly twelve hours apart.

The number one cause of death in diabetic cats isn’t diabetes, or the hypoglycemia that can occur when cats are receiving insulin. It’s euthanasia. Caring for a diabetic cat requires a serious commitment. Your life pretty much revolves around the shot schedule, and going away on vacation (or even a weekend) is problematic.

Since I’m the only one who can handle Hickory, I’m the shot giver. We got Hickory about 10 years ago from Toronto Cat Rescue. She came from a feral cat colony in Wasaga Beach, Ontario. Another rescue group trapped the cats and shipped them to Toronto, where there would be a better chance of finding homes for them.

They estimated Hickory to be about 4 months old, and she’d never been around humans. She spent the first few months after we got her living under the futon in the guest bedroom. When we took her to the vet for an exam (miraculously, we managed to get her into a cat carrier), they had to muzzle her, and the vet had to wear gloves to handle her, otherwise she would have bitten and scratched him.

Our cat Hickory with her two buddies, Henry and Lucy

(L to R) Hickory and her two buddies, Henry and Lucy

Fast forward to now, and she’s still shy and prefers the company of our other cats to us. However, she hasn’t needed a muzzle at the vet for years, and she’ll let me (but not my partner) pick her up. She’s come a long way, but she’s still not entirely comfortable around us. So when we got the diagnosis, I thought, “I have to give Hickory insulin shots? You gotta be freaking kidding me! This is going to be a nightmare!” But it’s turned out to be pretty easy. The vet suggested that I give them to her while she’s eating, and that’s worked out so far.

So for a couple of weeks, we were consumed with getting into the insulin shot routine, seeing the vet more often than usual, and, of course, throwing ourselves a pity party. Not again. Why us? The usual crap. Then we got over it. Life goes on, and we’re hopeful that Hickory will live for many more years.

Other stuff that’s been occupying my time:

A wonderful game called Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has really grabbed me by the throat, in a way that Skyrim, the latest game in my favourite gaming series, never did. Kingdoms of Amalur is massive, the world is colourful and enchanting, the lore was written by fantasy writer R.A. Salvatore, and there’s just so much to do that I probably won’t finish it by the time Mass Effect 3 is released in early March. I see lots and lots of gaming in my future!

I’ve also been writing. The final Rymellan story is on schedule for March, I’m polishing a short story I wrote in January (I’ll submit this one to e-zines and the like), I’m writing what will probably turn out to be a novella or novel and the beginning of a series (not sure what I’ll do with this project), and I’m working on a longish project (time-wise, not length-wise) that’s still in the research stage. Also, more than six months on and with fresh eyes, I reread the initial story I wrote for the Sapphic Signs line; the one I didn’t submit. I’ve decided to salvage it and will start on that soon.

So…I’m writing quite a bit and enjoying the variety of projects.

Later.

My Writing Plans for 2012

Before I talk about 2012, I thought I’d look back at My Writing Plans for 2011. How did I do?

At this point in time, only two projects are definitely on my “to-write” list: the Rymellan series and a story for Torquere Press’s Sapphic Signs…

Check. Posted four stories to Rymellan Fiction and wrote Like Water and Water.

I do know that I’d like to focus on short stories and novellas. Since I don’t write a story with a set length in mind, I might end up writing a novel anyway, but my preference will be to work on projects that I expect to come in under 50K words.

Bzzt! I ended up writing Threaded Through Time, Books One and Two, both of which came in over 50K words. Having said that, when I started to write Threaded Through Time, Book One, I expected it to come in under 50K words.

I see myself publishing only one print book in 2011: Rymellan 2.

Bzzt! I ended up taking Threaded Through Time to print, too.

Okay, so I won’t be enjoying a second career as a psychic anytime soon.

What’s in Store for 2012?

At the moment, I have only one story on my “to-write” list; in fact, I’m already writing it: the March Rymellan story. Will there be any other Rymellan stories in 2012? I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say no. But as you can see from 2011, nothing I say in this post is cast in stone.

I will, of course, take Rymellan 3 to print and eBook in 2012.

What Else?

Once I’ve finished the March Rymellan story, I’ll open my ever-growing ideas file and choose what to write next. I hope to cross a few ideas off the list in 2012.

I’ll try to do what I wanted to do in 2011: focus on shorter works. I’d like to write a variety of stories, none of which I’ll talk about because I don’t know what I’ll do with them when they’re finished.

Possibilities:

  1. Learn from the experience and stick the story in a drawer.
  2. Submit the story to an ezine, magazine, or anthology.
  3. Wait until I’ve built up a decent collection of stories and then publish them.
  4. For novellas: publish them.

As you can see, the options range from never publishing a story to potentially having a story accepted for publication in a year or two. Given that, there’s no point talking about what I’m writing as I go along. I’ll only talk about a story when I know that it’ll be published, and when.

No More WIP Page

Once I’ve posted the March Rymellan story to Rymellan Fiction, I’ll remove the WIP page from this website. It’s mainly there so people can check where I am with the next Rymellan story. That will become moot in March, and since I won’t be talking about whatever I’m writing as I’m writing it, there won’t be anything to put on the WIP page.

Summary

In 2012, I’ll finish writing the March Rymellan story, and I’ll publish Rymellan 3 in print and eBook. I’ll focus on short stories, novelettes, and novellas for the remainder of the year. When I know if/when a story will be published, I’ll post about it on my blog.

I wish you a safe and happy holiday season, and all the best for 2012. See you next year!