Yes, I jumped in on the meme. I felt like it was necessary.

I woke up this morning in a rare good mood, which was weird, because I had like a ten-hour nightmare while I was sleeping last night. Nonetheless, I looked at the calendar when I woke up, and realized it was May 1. And a wave of optimism has washed over me.

Teaching while having a bunch of health problems has been really rough, and so has that 2-hour commute ( four hours of driving twice a week. Yeesh). As great as it’s been teaching in person (which I prefer), I’ve felt run down for a while. We only have two weeks of school left, thank goodness. I have summer as a break from teaching, and I expect myself to not only heal, but get a ton of writing done.

Speaking of writing, I only have to come up with 10,300 more words to make the second draft of The Step and the Walk comparable in length to The Name and the Key. I was hoping to finish the draft at the end of April, but it looks like if I keep chugging at it steadily, I can get it done the end of May. I’ve got some confidence in this, and I feel optimistic about this goal.

The only thing I’m worried about is money. I haven’t been able to find work, and my last paycheck is being spread super thin to cover the costs of printing, and mailing postcards and stickers to the ARC teams, which I promised would be sent out sometime in June. I also want to do my fanfiction panel at Matsuricon again, which is in September, but my college doesn’t do the first paycheck until after the event.

Ok, so that was some negative stuff slipped into this post. Oops! But I promise that despite that, I woke up feeling great and glad it’s a new month. Things are wrapping up and I’m excited to see where my writing takes me.

Plus, July 21 is when The Name and the Key releases! That’s in three months! EEE! Hopefully my ARC team gets the word out about the book, because I’ve secured all the editorial reviews I can. I wasn’t selected to do a book tour with MTMC Tours this time around, so I’m trying to gain publicity in a different way, and that’s through having my first-time ARC team.

I can’t way to see how all of this unfolds!

IT’S GONNA BE MAY!