…I’ve hit my stride now. I’m well launched and feeling…I can’t describe how good. It’s like nearly drowning and remembering how to swim. My writing skill has waked up and is fully functioning after two years of chemo and recovery, and it feels good, like stretching muscles too long cramped and not moving. Yep, some glitches, yep, going a third pass over what I’ve been working on is still finding some things to fix, but it’s smoothing out. Bren is in trouble as usual, and things are building up into a real mess, which is a good thing at this stage of the book.
Thank you all, thank you Sooooooooooooo much for staying with me.
Welcome back! we’re excited about new books.
You’re welcome!
That’s great news to hear! As I always do, I look forward to the upcoming book 🙂
It’s wonderful that you are feeling well enough to really be writing again. We are all looking forward to what you and Jane have cooked up !
I’ve been singing your praises to new friends and old. I hope to increase your fanbase even more. Keep at it and lets start planning a ShejiCon for 2023!
“Thank you all, thank you Sooooooooooooo much for staying with me.”
Staying? Where else would I go to hear from my favorite author? Thank you for sharing your life (and writing) with us
Thank you for letting us be here! We are so glad you are feeling better, and hearing about the next “Bren-ji book,” as my daughter calls them, is so exciting.
I’m so glad to hear that you’re able to really write again. I know it’s been a long hard struggle, in more ways than one. And as for Bren in trouble? Oh, GOODY! 🙂
That is very good news!
Oh, congratulations! In both a professional and a personal sense. It’s great to hear that you are feeling fully “you” again.I can’t wait to read the book… in the meantime I’ve been re reading and also introduced my son to your work via audible… we listened to cyteen together at the weekend. Thank you for such gifts!
Thrilling to hear that you are feeling not just well enough to write again, but that you are making progress on new trouble for Bren!
Would the Wavy Navy Ben Assistance Committee kindly e-mail me? I got what looked like a scam e-mail from one of our regulars; I hope they haven’t lost control of their account.
@chondrite, so did I. I sent a request for them to identify it here as a hacker or a good address, using our nickname for this site so if it’s a scammer he won’t know what I mean. Sorry to mis-use this thread that way, but it was the only thing I could think of to check it up while not giving a scammer more info.
I got a third mail back and it looks more and more like a scammer. If you got one too, I’m now sure of it.
I’ll send it on to our digital security team to check for bugs.
Please don’t send a group email now, as it looks like the scammer has their address and can intercept their email. A group mail including the compromised member would just give the spammer the rest of our email addresses. Be very wary of new gmail addresses labelled as / purporting to be one of the group.
I received an email purporting to be from the hacked individual. I did not answer back. Check your trash to see if you are getting mail from you bouncing back because it is undeliverable. I think this may be a hack that relies on steganography, but was poorly implemented. Everytime I get an email from the hacked individual, my email tries to send two messages out, both of these are being stopped by my email provider.
My apologies, Wavy Navy friends. Yes, evil Hackers got into my account, first time ever. Many of their attempts bounced but some got through. I’ve spent the last 3 days mitigating and setting up entirely new accounts argh.
As I emailed Hanneke back privately this early evening, I got the (pretty darn obvious) hacker email too as I’ve been trying (without success) to get Ben connected with social services (all require a working phone on his part). Luckily, subtlety is not a common hacker characteristic.
Great to hear! Just listened to the audio version of Downbelow on Audible and remembered why I first was so struck by that novel when I read it. The tension. Glad to hear you feel like its flowing again. As a programmer I know there are lots of things that can block the flow and you slug it out, day after day, but when its going, it goes and its glorious.
I love that feeling of picking the story back up and having the words come back. Excited to see what kind of trouble Bren finds himself in next.
Good to have you back! Always looking forward to new tense adventures whether Bren-ji or the merchanters/union/mazianni are in the middle of it 🙂
Yippee for feeling yourself again and for the creative flowing of words into stories!
I knew you could. I knew you could.
CJ this is wonderful to read :). So glad you are finding joy again in what you love … and of course we’ll stick by you, it’s a great privilege! It’s taken nearly 2 years for my husband to truly be “himself” after his series of disasters, and so much was subtle, till the little improvements work their way in. SO looking forward to Ben’s new troubles … and maybe some Alliance troubles … in your own good time; we’ll wait.
Hi – good to read that you are again working on getting Bren et al into and hopefully out of trouble. We have been waiting with bated breath. Hope the koi are doing well and the cats are letting you type.
Everyone stay safe and stay sane.
Jonathan up here is cold NH – but it is warming up.
A couple of years sounds about right for getting the brain back on line after that kind of adventure. (I’m still seeing slow improvements in things like the neuropathy from chemo. Three years!)
Finally broke down to buy Alliance Rising PB–don’t do that much since I depend on SS. A couple glitches stood out, should there be a second printing.
pg 57: “FLT”
pg 215: (i)way(/i) t(i)o(/i), i.e. way & o italicized, t not.
A brief progress report from the lymphoma front. Had one cycle of bendamustine. Oncologist didn’t like the skin symptoms (itching, peeling) and is worried about Stevens-Johnson syndrome (which can be fatal) so he’s switching to cyclophosphamide, vincristine and oral prednisone. One of the side effects of vincristine is peripheral nerve damage (not to mention chemo brain). Another is hair loss. Somewhat bummed. I’ve had a dose of this the last time around, lost half my hair after that single dose. Wound up in the hospital with pneumonia shortly thereafter. Treatment starts next Thurs.
I hope it’s better this time around!
(Sounds like the effects I got from chemo – one of the mabs has peripheral neuropathy as a side effect, and it’s slowly improving. The other mab Does Things to your blood pressure.)
They want me to get another CT/PET scan, which is fine, but it hasn’t been scheduled yet. (They thought they’d done that last fall. I’d even asked directly about it.)