Emerging from the Depths

It's been too long since I posted on this blog. I could make some excuse that I've been busy, but the truth is, I've been apathetic. I've dealt with severe depression the past few years, and while writing pulled me out of it briefly (enough that I was able to finish the rewrite of Lucid and publish it as Trial under the pen name Aesyn Cravery), but while I had high hopes of publishing book 2 in the new series, The Sacrifice, by the end of last year, that didn't happen. The book is plotted out and three-quarters complete, but a hard drive crash wiped out about one third of the book before I could back it up, which took all the creative wind out of my sails.

I have tried numerous times to jump back into recovering what I lost and finishing the book, entitled Reveal, but something is missing. Maybe it's just my will, but I can't seem to recapture the fire that had me pumping out words at a record pace. Considering the roll I was on, it should have been easy to rewrite everything, but that hasn't been the case. I have gone back to the book time and time again and am still not up to the point I was when I lost everything. I was so excited about this new series, which, when complete, will consist of nine books, all of which are plotted and somewhat outlined. I even had numerous scenes written for them, including the beginning and ending of each book, though much of that was also lost in the hard drive crash.

It's a lesson I should have learned long ago and thought I had a handle on. Back. Up. Often. And I do, at least every couple of weeks. I keep a log of all changes so I know what to back up, but I was on such a roll and writing so prolifically that I lost track of time. Then the day came that I turned on my computer and it wouldn't boot because it couldn't find the hard drive. I tried everything to recover it, but it was hosed and all that work lost. It was like a gut punch. I didn't realize just how much I lost until I started going through what was on my back up drive. Lesson learned. I now not only back up weekly to my portable drive but daily to my Google drive. Redundancy is my mantra now.

I am hoping by putting this out there that it will shame me into choking out my muse and getting her head back in the game. I'm still really excited about this series and love the characters, especially my main character, Laec Matthews. Those of you who read Lucid will remember him, but I tweaked the character, the book, and the premise of the series so much that I felt I had to change everything about it, including the title of both the book and the series, as well as publishing it under a different name so as not to confuse it with its previous incarnation. I published Trial early last summer and allowed it to languish without any promotion due to my mental state. I have no good excuse for that so I won't even bother justifying it. What I will do is ask anyone who hasn't read it to give it a shot. Trial is available exclusively for Kindle on Amazon.