Every day is the same old boring routine.
- Get up as early as my lack of sleep will allow.
- Throw some water on my hair and get it into some sort of manageable mess.
- Head to my desk with a plastic travel cup full of fresh iced-tea mixed with the not-so-fresh bit leftover from last night.
- Then sit down at my desk and write.
- Or if it’s too late, dive right into all the things that go into running an indie business.
- Quick break for lunch
- Work some more
- Dinner and a shower
- Decamp to the living room, where I’ll work until bedtime while we watch TV (or until my eyes won’t stay open anymore).
Then, good and tired, it’s off to bed, where I will then proceed to stare at the ceiling, tossing and turning, and generally being unable to actually, you know, sleep for at least two hours.
Why I can fall asleep on the couch with the TV blaring and then not be able to in bed is one of the enduring mysteries for the ages.
Nothing ever changes,
Except…
Yesterday, my aunt arrived from Southern California. She’s selling her house there and moving up here to be closer to us. And last year, my sister moved here from Reno with her family. Suddenly we have more than just close friends nearby. We have family.
These changes will spur others, some expected – spending more time with that family – and some unexpected, little bits of new that will creep into our lives as a result of their presence, and start to pry us out of the rut we are in.
Small things are starting to shift in our lives too… from something as simple as getting my computer back after a grueling two-week repair – it’s faster than it has been in over a year – to my arm slowly healing after its latest break.
Winter is slowly shuffling its way past us like a wooly mammoth, with the days gradually getting longer. When I open the blinds after I get up in the mornings, the sky is no longer black, but a lovely, deep shade of royal blue, full of promise for the day to come. And with the longer days, the temperatures are inching up bit by bit, too.
On the writing side, I’ve completed the book I was working on with Kim Fielding, and have also finished edits on the last two Tharassas books – The Hencha Queen and The Death Bringer – due out in March and September. It’s time to move ahead with my next novel, a prospect that thrills and scares me in equal measure.
And I am about to become a non-fiction author for the first time (well, if you don’t count the parents and teens book I was a part of way back in the eighties) with the publication of Suck a Little Happy Juice, my guide for indie authors like myself.
So things are changing. Cracks are appearing in the layer of ice that has encased us for years, hints of something new to come, like the scent of rain drifting over a parched desert. I reach my hands up, eager for it to drench me, to wash away the old and reveal whatever new thing is waiting, just under the surface.
And so I pause, and close my eyes, and feel new’s approach. It comes on quiet paws, like a mouse, slipping inside my stratified world through the tiniest of holes, ready to unleash the forces that will change everything.
I’m ready. Let it come.