Long time no see

Dear One,

It’s October 2022, and there’s blood on my desk.

For the past two years, my passion for writing has been butchered, cut down piece by piece by the more powerful desire to live a comfortable life.

I owe you the sequels for “Shinigami” and “Kogitsune”. I owe you “The Midnight Flower”, Kurohana’s story, and a dozen other fantasy stories that I started in secret. The truth is, I do not know when I will be ready to deliver them.

2019 was one of the best years of my life. I published Shinigami and got a promotion at my day job. For the past 15 years, I’ve been working in an IT corporation. For the past 20 years, I’ve been dreaming about the job that I have now.

This job, which I love, has also been the reason for my creative downfall since 2019. In the first two years, there was so much stress that my brain had shut down and my creativity had plummeted. I usually had time to write on the weekends. Now weekends are for sleeping and recovering. 

I’m not complaining. Money’s good, I can support my family and I can support my hobbies. Shinigami and Kogitsune make $200 per year. I made a good decision accepting this promotion.

But that meant no more time to write.

I never had the dream of being a full-time author. These dreams are utopias for people like me . I was born when Romania was a communist country with a dictator. The system had programmed my family to believe the only way to make money was to have a respectable job where you would work hard. “Dreams are not for us. We must work hard,” my parents used to say.

I’m working hard, I’m doing well, and I live in comfort. And my world is grey and my soul is empty.

It’s October 2022.

I’m trying to get back on the horse.I’m doing better time wise, and hopefully it will keep for at least until Christmas. My creative brain is also slowly pulling away from its shell.

It’s time to bring back some color in my world.

I may fail. Or I may deliver to you “Fields of Higanbana” – the sequel to Shinigami – next year. I have no idea. Only time will tell.

Wish me luck!

With all my love,

Xia

P.S. I started reading again. Hopefully, this time I can concentrate long enough to even finish a book.