*waves*

Life is short and fickle, you know?

I got some terrible news yesterday, the kind of news that puts everything in perspective. The kind that rocks your little world for a few violent,  torrid moments, like you're the island and fate is the towering tidal wave. The kind that makes you spend a lot of time afterward grateful that you were only vicariously traumatized.

That you aren't the one having to live through that reality, right in the very thick of it.

What am I saying?

I'm saying that despite it all, despite the love or hate or whatever else, everything is so inconsequential when it comes to the world you create around yourself, for whatever time you have. And I let myself get so upset about these words I have collected here, just full of flailing and tears and anger, that at first I wanted to feel bad about that. How small and stupid and selfish of me . . . but then . . . the things that bring you joy, no matter how small or stupid or selfish they might be, are the only things that might make your time here worthwhile. The little things that you love are the things that define you and I'm perfectly content to let my existence be defined by my words.

The ones here, the ones still stuck inside me, the ones I haven't even thought of yet.

So, yesterday was a complete loss. I was worthless. I spent the time reposting chapters, getting frustrated with formatting issues, fighting against time and energy and real life and readers, who plow through words faster than I can put them up.

---> The Other Way is fully posted and I'm putting the final touches on the PDF, just in time for Christmas. (Because I'm mf'ing SANTA, ok?)

---> Chalk, Mind The Gap and all of the outtakes are up as well, PDF in the works.

In the meantime - My head is being eaten up with original work. I only say this because I'm at a bit of a loss when it comes to Double Struck. Floundering is what I'd like to call it, but it's really more that the spark was snatched away in all the dirty din and dizzy mess that sprung up around me like a goddamn swarm of locusts and I just have not been able to locate it again. Like searching down a long dark hallway with your arms outstretched because you know there's a light switch somewhere, you're just not entirely sure where.

I'm still fumbling.

Thank God for Hadley Hemingway.

And let's talk about her for a minute, shall we? Because after I got that terrible news yesterday, you know who I called? Her. Not my mother. Not my sister or my friends. Her. How did this happen? This random, fandom friendship we created on a fluke that has now become so important to me that I reach out to her in times like that? I'll tell you how:

Because we're soul mates, I shit you not.

How do I know this? I know this because I picked her name out of hundreds for a reason. I know this because we can talk on the phone for HOURS, but a lot of that time is spent in comfortable silence as we work, just like an old married couple. I know this because we think things at the exact same moment. I know this because I don't make friends easily and she slipped on just like that old favorite pair of gloves. I know this because we call to check up on each other and I start to feel funny if I haven't talked to her in a couple of days. Her family puts up with me, both from afar and in close proximity, and my husband always knows who I'm talking about even though I jump from her Hadley moniker to her real name and back again without even blinking.

She has my manuscript.

She also has my heart.

XXOO

HBM