So life hates me.

I don’t mean that in a, “Poor little Fae, pity me,” sort of manner. I’m also not asking for help; a combination of pride and lack of necessity prevent me from doing so. The purpose of this journal is to simply explain a couple of things that have been happening to me in the barest detail possible, so that people who might otherwise do so aren’t simply left scratching their heads.

The first and perhaps biggest question people might have been asking is, “Where the hell did Fae go?” After all, I just practically disappeared after I uploaded the third story of the 2017 edition of Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special. You’ve barely heard hide nor hair of me since then, and that’s due to a number of factors. The simple answer is the one I offered above: life hates me. I’ve been enduring a string of really shitty luck for just the longest time now, and life has found a way to screw me over at every possible turn. I am, at this point, a viable subject for studies in statistical improbability. My silence over the last few months has honestly just been a matter of me struggling through… well, everything. Doing the best I can and I’m still alive, but those who know my situation can barely believe the bullshit I’ve had to weather. Those of you who don’t wouldn’t believe it if I listed it all off. Reality, truly, is stranger than fiction.

So before we continue on what the above means, let’s drop briefly into an associated question number two: “What happened to FCMTS 2017?” The answer there is simple: I was running up against the deadlines for the stories and I couldn’t get them done in time. I could have pushed harder and cranked SOMETHING out, but this series of five stories was meant to be monumental. It was meant to be focused on a fixture of these oft-unconnected stories I do every year for Christmas time in the form of Alisha. And I knew from the outset that no matter what I wanted to do with him, I’d disappoint people. This is because what I decided to do with Alisha was turn this crossdressing, gold-digging grifter of a fox who had hot sex and stole masses of money in the process… into a character with a history and personality.

I started this with the 2016/17 stories that involved Alisha; this process of gradually turning him into a real, breathing person of a character rather than a two-dimensional cutout for the masses to grind on. I realized that I had a great opportunity to tell a cool story about Alisha and the struggle between the dichotomy of the assumed persona of Alisha and his subsumed original self, Alan. This would really break the mold, because I’d never done a single FCMTS story to date that hadn’t been a sexy gay romp of a tale. Two of the five stories were planned to be completely sexless (one of which was the last story to go up last year), and it was hoped that it would be well-enough received that sometime this year I could write a sort of novella followup that detailed the continuation of Alisha’s story.

Unfortunately, the reception received was less than stellar, and I don’t quite know what to chalk it up to. Maybe the story wasn’t clicking, or the characters involved weren’t working, or maybe there’s an audience problem or something, or maybe I just didn’t do a good enough job. I know the timing isn’t really much of a problem, since my Christmas stories often wind up being moderately well viewed at the time (and they also trickle in a lot of views and favourites as time goes on and people catch up with what they missed over the holiday). For some reason, these Alisha stories that had done so well in the past were just… not getting anyone’s attention. At a time where I was planning a lot of stuff I thought would be really cool for the character and was really excited about, this took the wind right out of my sails. If not for the absolute deconstruction of my outside enthusiasm at the time due to life being shitty, I could have struggled through. Seeing the lack of response just put the nail in the coffin. I stopped working on the stories to come. Their half-finished state has been gathering digital cobwebs in a Scrivener document ever since December.

That’s not to say they won’t be finished, of course. What would have been the set of five stories from the 2017 FCMTS will be completed. Whether I dump them when I finish them or save them for Christmas time this year I’m not sure of just yet, but they will certainly be finished. The trouble is that I just don’t care presently. My apathy toward putting stories up online can’t be understated, and that’s got nothing to do with views or favourites or star ratings or anything on your end, and everything to do with my end of things. I’ve still got big plans and big projects (both of which have been getting equally little actual literary attention lately), but my writing is just in a holding pattern right now. It’s not going anywhere. I’m not writing. I’m not working on things. This, as you might expect, vexes me somewhat.

So let’s bring things around to where I’ve gone, and more importantly, “What’s happening to Fae now?” The simple answer to that question is that I’m moving. Again. Some people might remember I had five different places of residence in 2015, which is a record I hope never to break again in my life. I had also hoped that the next move I made would be the last for a long-ass time, but this too is a temporary measure. It’s frustratingly interstate, forcing me to leave behind the city I love and want to stay in to go back to a city that I long-since abandoned. There are plusses to this arrangement that could see good things happening for me in the immediate future, but the frustration of the moving itself can’t be understated. I hate everything about this. You have no idea.

Honestly, the question of what comes after that is… really hard to answer, honestly. I don’t really think I’m capable of planning ahead at this point. I used to, years and years ago, plot out my writing timelines months and even years in advance. “If I write this much here, I can have this project done by then,” sorta thing. Going through an old laptop yesterday, I saw a plan that would have seen a furry novel project I’ve long since abandoned would have been written and finished by the end of March 2013. I’ve stopped doing those plans because I never really do account for my poor fortune (just exactly what did I do in a past life that I’m still paying off the bad karma this time around?). That I want to write more is not in question. What, however, is.

I have the sequel novel for Blood And Water sitting here in Scrivener, awaiting its next editing pass. I have an outline document for a five novel series that begins literally a day after the end of the B&W novel. I’ve got a couple of Hot Dish reject stories also sitting here (one set in the B&W world just before Oswell was even born) that I’ll be figuring out what to do with. I’ve thought about putting a book together set in the B&W world across all four of its continents with a selection of four or five Hot Dish-length pieces that could flesh things out a bit (and show more than ample flesh at the same time). I still have an urban fantasy series (the document is titled ‘Nexus’ in Scrivener presently) that I wanted to write a few years ago and upload in the same manner that I did with Blood and Water. There’s that Alisha novella I want to write. And this is all just the furry stuff, for the record; I have three in-progress non-furry novels that I want to finish up, edit, and shop around once I have them in a viable state, to say nothing of the literally three dozen outlined novels I want to write in my fantasy and sci-fi continuities. That I have enough to write is not even remotely in question. I wish my brain would stop giving me new ideas, honestly. I already have enough for a lifetime.

So that’s why I’ve been so quiet for the last… five months. Fuck, it has been that long. I don’t really know what to say. I have had a LOT going down in my life. I have had a lot of my life going down, too. In flames. Bright and vibrant. I’m still here though, and I’m not done kicking about just yet. I have shit to do. I have a lot to write. And hell, you’re even going to see me in print again later this year, as a part of Dissident Signals, edited by Slip Wolf and Nighteyes and published through Furplanet. It should be a great anthology centered on the theme of dystopia, so I wholeheartedly encourage you all to check it out for more than just me! Pretty sure it’s aiming for an Anthrocon release, so if you’re there, go check out the Furplanet table and buy it! Don’t worry if you forget; I will remind you via twitter once it’s available for purchase.

Otherwise, there’s not going to be much you catch from me anytime soon, really. One of those Hot Dish reject stories might wind up being tossed up online to tease your heartstrings while I keep the other for different, considerably more nefarious purposes. It’s possible that the next story you see online might well be another Alisha story, to conclude the pieces from last year’s FCMTS, and that might not be until Christmas. Life’s chaotic as fuck right now, so I hope you won’t begrudge me that. Once things start to stabilize, you may well start seeing more from me both in a for-free-online space, and also in the published space. Who knows? Maybe there’ll be a whole lot of the latter. Wouldn’t that be fun?

For now, I’m sorry for the absence. Be well, all, and take care. Thank you for enjoying my work, and I hope I can keep you entertained for a long time to come.

• Faora