Hey, there! Wait, pardon me one second…

blows dust off the blog

coughs

That’s better.

clears throat

Bonjour, hello! Apologies for the radio silence since November. Things have been…a bit chaotic and uncertain these past few months. It’s all worked out in the end, but getting here has meant many weeks of stressful limbo.

I’m not even sure where to start, tbh. Since November 2022, I’ve:

• been laid off
• filled out a ton of additional paperwork for IRCC as part of the ExpressEntry PR process
• interviewed with half a dozen companies, one of which was interrupted when my wife called to get troubleshooting help with our EV so she could make a medical exam appointment 200km from our house as part of the PR application
• got a new job
• was told my PR application was accepted but not confirmed so I couldn’t start said new job
• flew home for the holidays
• came back to Canada to fight with the web-based PR confirmation portal over my uploaded passport-style photograph
• pushed back my start date by one week every Thursday for four weeks while waiting on my PR confirmation

I’m leaving out…so much. But that should give you some sense of everything that’s gone down in the last few months.

In the end, it’s all worked out, thank goodness. As of last Friday, I’m officially a Canadian permanent resident!

I have my eCOPR (electronic confirmation of permanent residence) in hand, which I’ve passed on to my new employer (Cisco) as proof of my ability to legally work in Canada. That means I can go back to work, and finally end the weird forced sabbatical I’ve been on since getting laid off by Elastic (they cut 12% of their workforce, so it wasn’t just me, those tech layoffs really are going around).

I’m still processing everything that’s gone on, tbh. Been so focused on immigration issues that I’ve neglected other things, like my writing (NaNoWriMo did not go well), my friends (I kind of dropped off the grid there for a bit), and projects for back in SD (there’s a mountain of paperwork my wife needs help with in regards to her mother and younger brother). I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

But at least now I have the mental head space in which to do it. With the PR behind me, I can focus on settling into my new job, helping my wife, and actually planning for the future (I’ve been unable to see past “get my PR” for so long).

So, happy (belated) new year! May your 2023 be more stable than my 2022, and give you the space to breathe and work to accomplish your goals, whatever they are.

We made it to a new year!

In the past, I've taken that for granted. One year rolled into the next, I got older, and the world kept turning.

Not this year. This year, reaching January feels like an escape, like ducking under a closing door just before it seals itself shut.

So a sincere Happy New Year to us all!

Novel's at 19,864 words. I'm still butt in chair every morning, forcing myself to stay there until I hit my word count goal. Some mornings it's easier, some it's harder, but...I'm always making progress.

I'm actually starting to run out of runway on the research I've already done about the setting. Which means I'm having to make more things up out of thin air, and thus getting more things wrong. I've already had to revise a few scenes based on new reading I've done. That'll happen more and more, I expect, until I can catch up.

I know that ultimately, I'll need to do some heavy editing of this draft, once it's complete. Not just to fix some inconsistencies, but also to ensure the things that are consistent are historically accurate. Or at least, as accurate as a non-specialist like me can get them in a fictional tale.

But since I know I'll need to do it, it doesn't scare me to get things wrong now. What's important now, I think, is to get the emotional beats of the story right. If I can nail down the characters, and how they react to the things that happen to them, I can fix the details later. Even if those details mean I need changes to the events of the plot, that's fine. So long as the emotional arc of things is right.

That's my theory, at least.

I want to thank those of those you who've been reading me regularly through this hell year. You give me hope that someday, these novels I grind away at will see the light of publication.

And for my fellow writers, I offer a hope and a blessing: May your writing be a joy and comfort to you. May your inner editor take a vacation when you're drafting. And may all your tales be true.

Onward to 2021!

Thank the gods 2016 is over.

I think it’s been a rough year for many people. My rough 2016 actually stretches all the way back to fall 2015, when my wife and I upped stakes and moved back to the mid-south to take care of her mother.

The stress of that time – her mother’s health, the terrible condition of the house we bought, the shock of discovering that all traces of the friendly South we’d once known were gone – almost undid us. We felt abandoned, hated by our neighbors and resented by her family.

Things improved when we were able to tread water enough to reconnect with our friends, plug back into the community of accepting nerds and geeks we’d missed.

But the presidential campaign, culminating in the election of a liar, a swindler, and a bigot, convinced us that nothing could make up for the fact that we don’t belong here. And never will.

So we’re moving back to California.

Back to a state that takes life seriously, and so passed the most restrictive gun control laws in the country.

A state that takes liberty seriously enough to want to offer it to refugees from a horrible civil war.

A state that knows the pursuit of happiness means respecting the many diverse ways that its citizens go about it.

I can’t wait to be back home.