As you can see I’ve been MIA for awhile. I swear there’s a good reason for it.

Of all things for some fool to attack, my WordPress account got hacked. Nothing disappeared. Nothing was moved or taken, and nothing majorly bad happened. Unless, of course, you consider my complete inability to access my account and either of my blogs since right after Fandom Fest. I’ve spent countless hours going in circles with customer service. I’ve searched message board after message board, and even got hold of a telephone number that did me absolutely no good.

The ultimate solution to my blog lockdown?

Resetting my password.

Whatever bright star decided to tell me about the hacking didn’t tell me that the ONLY way to get back into my account was to go into the “Lost Password” thing and do it that way.

That calls for a pretty hefty facepalm, I think.

But enough of that… let’s move forward, shall we?

In the last month I’ve been surprisingly productive – I sold a very short contemporary I/R story to Mocha Memoirs Press for the 31 Days of Steamy Mocha, and I’ve been told it has done well so far.

Here’s the cover:

Click on the picture and go buy it. It’s only $1 and it has a 4-star rating at Barnes & Noble. I promise you won’t be sorry.

More on the writing front… I’ve finished and submitted two horror stories through my alter ego and I’m now about 30,000 words into a new contemporary romance (what is wrong with me???) that I would like to shop around to some of the bigger houses – yeah, I tried it before and it didn’t work, but I know why. This one will be different.

I won’t give away too much on it yet because I don’t want to jinx myself. Let’s just say that so far it’s moving along nicely.  I should probably also get off my duff and finish self-editing Loki’s Game while I’m at it, huh? That would give me two novels right off the bat.

Note to self: STOP PROCRASTINATING, SIOBHAN!

Personally things have been pretty even – Miss Alice is now six months old. My con schedule for the year is done. My niece had her baby last week, bringing the fifth living generation into our family. I lost a coworker under very suspicious circumstances a month ago – not just a coworker, but a good friend. We don’t know what really happened yet, but suffice it to say the story on his “suicide” keeps changing depending on how drunk his widow is and who she’s talking to. The situation has given me a good idea for a story though… Maybe once I get the novel finished I can write that.  Plus, I’m still trying to find a way to deal with my father’s death. He’s been gone three months now and it isn’t easy.

So that’s my dad, two friends and a friend’s grandmother in three months. I’m ready for this to stop.

There’s a lot of stress in my life and it seems writing is the best catharsis. Whatever I’m feeling I can trap on paper. From what I’ve been told by one of my beta readers, it makes my writing a lot stronger.  I’m going to take her word for it.

So the big question now… where do I go from here?

I think I’m ready to take a step up – to move from small to medium presses.  Yes, I’ll still work with the presses I have now – I wouldn’t be where I am without them and I appreciate every one of them for that. But I also have to think about what’s best for me – what’s going to put me where I want to be.  I need to keep higher expectations of myself, and most of all I need to remember that yes, I can do this.

That’s the hard part. For someone who has never had much self-confidence, some days it’s a real struggle to believe that I can keep going. But I will, because I’m stubborn and I refuse to give up on my dreams.

If I give up on those, what do I have left?