Hello Family, Friends, and Fans!
This past month has been a struggle.
Challenges
I have been working hard on an intense class for school that is a writing workshop. The good news? I am getting some valuable feedback on my novel Poseidon’s Pearl: Book One of the Poseidon’s Object Series. The bad news? The class is a lot of work, so I have to put the assignments first over my second editing pass of the full manuscript.
Not to mention, my mental wellness challenges have flared up for the past couple of weeks, draining my energy so my productivity has gone down in an effort to be kind to myself and let myself heal.
Even though I’ve had some challenges, I have been making small steps of progress in other areas.
Successes
I am working, slowly, on re-structuring Write of Passion so my team doesn’t burn out again and hopefully we can continue to publish journals and anthologies for your reading pleasure. It won’t be up and running any time soon, but I am working on it.
Secondly, even though this class is intense, I am working ahead so when I have completed all the work for class I can do on my own, I will just have to do the week-by-week assignments and will have more time to write. Plus, I am getting invaluable feedback that is helping shape my novel.
I discovered a new emotional arc for my characters in Poseidon’s Pearl and am going to revise the work to emphasize this aspect. I am in no rush to publish, but I am working on making the work as good as it can get.
Finally, this blog post is a miracle of itself, that I took the time to write it and post it. I was half-planning on a social media annouccement that this month’s update wouldn’t happen, but instead of writing that, I wrote this update.
Thank you for reading my life updates! I have a treat for those of you who have made it this far: I’m going to share a short excerpt of Poseidon’s Pearl also known as PO1. Enjoy!
Sienna:
After taking a deep breath, I decided I would go for a swim to relax and gain some mental clarity. I toed off my shoes and headed towards the water. I loved the feeling of the warm sand between my toes. The ocean felt like bath water at this time of year, at the end of dry season, when heat still permeated the air. I dove under when I was waist deep.
Something changed as I swam forward. Before I knew what was happening, I felt the water pulling me deeper, tossing me around, and dragging me out to sea.
A riptide. The sting of the salt when I opened my eyes didn’t bother me. I struggled, trying to get my bearings and figure out which way was up so I could ride the current and get a breath of air.
My heart pounded in my ears and throat as the need for air burned in my lungs. Involuntarily, my mouth and nose opened. I breathed in nothing but water. My body tried to cough the water out but that just made me inhale more.
This was it. I was going to die.
Fiction Author Hayley Green 