🚀The Dark Age: What a family is for

Hello, friends!

Lately I feel like I'm either scrambling to keep up with all the things I need to do, or I'm opting out altogether, and doing puzzles or playing games instead. Remember in 2020, several months into the pandemic, when there were all those practical think-pieces with titles like How to Practice Self-Compassion or Tips for Being Kinder to Yourself During Trying Times? I think about all of those stories a lot. It was sort of like, for a moment, the whole world lifted its head and realized the grind couldn't go on. Tragic that it took a pandemic to remind us that it's okay to take breaks, to be unproductive, to ignore goals.

I handed in the first draft, then second, of my ghostwriting novel recently. It's since been accepted by my editor, which means Yeah, okay, I can publish this. My immediate thought was Excellent, now I can turn my attention back to The Dark Age awhile. (I shit you not, minutes after I had that thought, my agent wrote with news of another ghostwriting project I might want to consider.)

The Dark Age marches on. I'm writing a part of the novel about Fran currently, exploring the last act of her life, when her husband is still hibernating somewhere beyond the solar system and her daughter is grown and moved away. She's discovering that her dreams aren't entirely dead after all. She's finding a way to be herself even though she's been forced into retirement from her space agency job, even though every doctor she sees has advised her to keep her fragile body on the ground, not among the clouds.