New-minted Constable Peter Grant has a problem. He's got exclusive eyewitness testimony of a murder -- but his witness is a ghost. And speaking with the dead is about to be the least weird thing in his life...
(Belated) thank-yous to all the well-wishers from the last post! I appreciate your good thoughts. Also, your patience. And big thanks to LaughingAstarael, who sent me not only good wishes but fanart for my birthday, even if I haven't managed to get it up for two weeks. It is incrediblely awesome, and manages to capture Lena far better than I do some days.
State of the kat: I am considerably better these days, in that I can face most meals without swallowing queasily and no longer require eighteen hours of sleep a day, even if I still kinda want it. Unfortunately the first thing that keeps occurring to me on good days is not 'comic' but rather 'OMG what has happened to my kitchen/house/yard/friends and husband/life?' I'm also struggling a bit to do creative work. I'm not yet sure whether this is a side effect of pregnancy or pure laziness, but I'm promising myself to get something up here by next week at the latest. And now I've promised you too, so I have to do it. Tricksy, eh?
October 28, 2010
Oh, look! Craptastic, lame filler art that I did months ago! And it's practically the only update in October!
Let me explain.
I haven't been able to post due to health reasons. However, I don't have a stomach flu, as I rather shiftily suggested, or anything medically bad, as people have been worrying. The truth is I'm pregnant again. Given the circumstances last time I was holding off on talking about this for as long as possible... and in September it looked like this would actually work; I was tired, sure, I ate up my pitiful excuse for a buffer, but I could still work.
But it all got worse in October. Unfortunately, I work a physically strenuous job 9 hours a day, 6 days a week, and this combined with increasing pregnancy fatigue and stuff like the computer screen making me queasy (in fairness, almost everything seems to make me queasy. Whoever didn't name it 'morning, noon, and night' sickness deserves to be shot) means that, for pretty much all of October, I have pretty much been walking in the door from work and straight into the bedroom. Occasionally I would make some effort to help my poor, long-suffering husband with the mounting housework, or open DAZ and try to do something before the queasies hit, or work on a script, but really... it's like the month that wasn't.
The good news is that I'm just out of the first trimester now and everything seems to be improving -- I'm even able to toddle off to the World Fantasy Convention (we'd been planning to go since early this year, so telling the poor husband 'nope, too sick' would have been pretty awful) with a semi-reasonable expectation that I won't be too big a drag, or spend the entire con passed out on a couch somewhere. The better news, as far as I'm concerned, is that I'm just out of the first trimester and everything seems fine. Won't be sure until my 14-week appointment on Tuesday, but they found a heartbeat and no problems at 10 weeks, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I am determined to get updates going again not too long after that, even if they're only filler (there may be an unexpectedly quick resumption of that letter exchange). But I won't leave you guys hanging much longer, I promise. It's just I got so very much sicker than I was expecting.
(To the kind person who emailed worrying I had Lyme's disease: oh thank god it's just pregnancy; my dad's had that and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Also, I am sorry I didn't email you back... see sick, hating computers, trying to hold off on telling people about the pregnancy, etc.)
(Oh, right. The pic. So I think I've mentioned once or twice that my first novel was set in the era of the Gene Lords, kind of. I say 'kind of' because the worldbuilding in that novel was, as one of my beta readers kindly described it, like very pretty but not overly convincing stage set; don't kick it, it might fall over. In fact the novel basically sucked and I would rather set my hair on fire than let anyone see it now, but I retain a lingering fondness for the protaganists, two of which are pictured here. They were crippled by a horrible first novel with bad worldbuilding, terrible wordsmithing, and no plot, but they were interesting people all the same.)
