Category: From the Author

A little under a year ago, I wrote “Will of a Wisp,” submitted it, and it placed in the Leading Edge contest and was published in their magazine. Why is this story so significant to me? Because it was the first story I wrote after my surgeries for cancer last year. Cancer that had affected my body so that I was incapable of reading and writing. This story was a victory for me, not just for placing in the contest, but because it helped prove to myself I was healing.

Yesterday, I found out I the story nominated for the Critter’s Readers’ Choice Awards. These awards are open to all readers to vote in. If you would, please take a moment and consider voting for it. The polls close on January 11th.

You can vote for the stories here: https://critters.org/predpoll/shortstorysf.shtml
Information on my story is here: https://www.mistglenmoon.net/books/the-leading-edge-issue-78/

Let’s start with the good news. Nay, the AMAZING news. I had my post op appointment with the oncologist and received the pathology report. I am clean.

Huzzah!

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to process this news, I’ve come to one realization. My sister saved my life. To explain this will take a bit of rewinding.

In the hazy past (no, I don’t recall how long) my sister had a cyst the size of a soccer ball when it was found (not jealous of the size). Like me, her invader was removed as quickly as possible. Unlike me, her unlamented creature was completely benign (that’s the part I’m jealous of). After her surgery her migraines abated.

Fast forward to me last year. In addition to a myriad of problems I was trying to deal with, I was having cognitive issues. My migraines had ticked up slightly (hadn’t missed their absence), but worse was reading and writing.

By December it had progressed to where I could not read, nor could I write. Not more than a couple sentences every several hours (talk about a flow killer). If I tried, my brain felt like it was literally vibrating in my skull. Or at other random times like my skull was squeezing my brain even when I was behaving. If I ignored the warning sign of buzzing brain, I would break out into physically trembling all over. Once I hit that point, I’d need several hours in a very dark room doing absolutely nothing before I could to do anything again. I do mean anything.

I also, I wasn’t enjoying light at all. Okay, light and I have never completely gotten along (the sun is an EVIL day orb). But this was to the point I kept the lights off in any room I was in and my wonderful friend blacked out the windows as much as possible too. I could not stand light.

Yep, a lot of symptoms were centering around my head. Okay, these problems are only a small portion of what I was dealing with, but they had major impact on my functionality.

When I had a follow-up with my primary physician in December, specialists had already ruled out some things, and we were going to start exploring others (yay, more doctors). The neurologist was progressing slowly. I’ve discovered those are extremely busy doctors and as a result have long intervals between appointments. But while my PC and I were discussing this, my sister and her cyst’s effects on her head jumped into mine.

I asked the doctor if it would be worth checking.

He agreed to check.

The creature was found.

The creature was removed.

The cancer was found, and things spiraled quickly from there.

Whoosh.

No wonder I feel a bit dizzy about everything that’s happened right now.

I am certain if my sister hadn’t had her creature, I never would have thought to ask my doctor to check that. They wouldn’t have found the cancer as soon as they did and everything would have been much, much worse. Possibly, or maybe even probabl,y deadly.

But she had her creature which led me to asking the question that revealed mine. So now I’m here, healing and looking to my future.

As a bonus, today is also three years since I got my surgery recovery friend. This dragon has made an incredible pillow to help me battle pain.

Like my protagonist from “Crossroads of the Sky,” Annabelle, I love the feeling of floating. Right now mine, unlike hers, comes from the more mundane explanation of excitement instead of soaring on a fueling platform. I wouldn’t trade the experience, at least not at the moment.

Over the weekend, I received the wonderful news that “Crossroads of the Sky” received the Critters 2020 Readers Choice Award for Best Steampunk Short Story.

I still am unsure what to say beyond I am truly touched that enough people also enjoyed this story to nominate it and help it place first. Thank you to everyone who voted for the story.

I loved writing this story. The heart of the story is home, and I’m grateful to know it has found a home in other’s hearts as well.

If you haven’t yet, you can catch Annabelle’s tale in A Mighty Fortress along with more amazing steampunk stories from great authors. Check out a brief except of “Crossroads of the Sky” here, along with information on where it is available.

This year has been full of twists and turns, and while there’s only days left, I’m still working through them. Today added an exciting one!

My short story “Crossroads of the Sky” was nominated in the Critters 2020 Readers’ Choice Awards for Steam Punk Short Stories. More information on the story is available here.

Voting is open to all readers here:http://www.critters.org/predpoll/shortstorysteam.shtml

September 23rd.

Looking at my blog and realizing how long it has been since I last posted flash fiction on September 23rd is hard. At the start of September, I had posted about the health struggles I had been going through since the start of July. They are still going on. Unfortunately, those same struggles have affected my capacity to write, and my capacity to read.

I needed to give myself time to heal, and I’m still not there. Progress is being made, and I’m slowly getting answers. There are still more pieces to find and more time to recover.

However, I am a writer. Not writing drives me insane. So, I’m trying something new. Thanks to the encouragement of my friends, especially Martin Shoemaker, I’m trying out voice dictation to see if this will allow me to reconnect with words. This post was written using that method.

Well I am sad to see the empty weeks on my blog, I know they will not stay empty. I will find ways to write. Those weeks will be filled with the stories I would have written if I had been up to it. For now, writing far slower than I like, but I will keep creating and sharing the worlds which are still vibrantly alive inside my head.

I am an author, and I can’t wait to share again.

I am in the high-risk category for Covid-19 for a condition I was diagnosed with before I was one, asthma. Because of this I have been cautious and taken all the precautions I could to prevent contracting the disease.

Then on July 1st my health changed. No, I did not get Covid-19 then, but while trying to get supplies to a student in an essential services field to help continue their education, I rolled my ankle causing soft tissue damage. Due to previous soft tissue wounds I knew I heal slowly from this type of injury, one taking over two years to heal. Due to my spine problems I knew I could not use crutches. I borrowed my mother’s wheelchair.

As a result, I started working even more remotely where I could not walk or travel easily. I did pickup orders from the grocery store. I had extremely little contact with anyone.

On the evening of July 22nd, I knew I felt off. By the next morning I knew I was sick. After calling, I was advised to take a Covid-19 test. I took the test as soon as I could and recall thinking that the test wasn’t so bad. The personal was obviously stressed and didn’t tell me much. I was able to drive away immediately.

The result came back negative, and my doctor decided to put me on an antibiotic where there were symptoms that were clearly bacterial. After trying one and switching to a second antibiotic where there was no improvement, the bacterial symptoms were gone.

However, I was not better. The remaining symptoms where ones commonly associated with Covid-19. My doctor instructed me to take a second test. When the second test was administered it was much worse, much more invasive than the first test had been. This test was administered on August 12, 2020 a full 20 days after the first test. This test the personal was much more engaged with me, gave me much more thorough instructions, and the test was extremely invasive. One of the personal’s parting words were to let me know how leave “when I was ready to drive.” It took a couple minutes before I could.

The second test’s results also came back negative.

I discussed with my nurse practitioner’s assistant what symptoms where bothering me most, which he had requested. I informed him of two. First, breathing difficulties which I stated was not like when having an asthma attack or like when I have had bronchitis or pneumonia. Second, concentration problems I am having. When I try to concentrate too much (especially on my writing) my head will feel like it is buzzing, and if I ignore this warning sign I will start to tremble until I am not functional at all.

My doctor’s decision was to diagnose me with asthma. The condition I’ve been diagnosed with since before I was one. And that he had prescribed a refill inhaler for the week before.

I could say a lot on what I think of this diagnosis, but I will leave it at I do not believe my doctor listened to me. Finding a doctor who will listen and diagnose based on symptoms is a challenge now. Doctors are under huge amounts of stress. They are treating more patients and lacking information on this disease for many reasons including that the disease is new, there is a lot that is not known yet and, like the rest of us, they cannot hold their normal conferences to learn from each other.

As of today, I have been ill for 46 days.

While the bacterial symptoms were treated with the antibiotics, the rest have not lessened in this time. Instead I have some days which are my new normal and some days which are much worse, but I am not improving noticeably.

I believe the first test was done incorrectly. I know that the tests have a high false negative rate. Everything I research my symptoms line up with Covd-19. I believe I did manage to contract the disease through community spread and that I am in a long-haul recovery.

I have been extremely lucky. While the symptoms are being persistent, they have not been extreme. Still, I would encourage everyone to take precautions against contracting Covid-19. The disease is new. Doctors don’t understand it yet. You do not know how your body will react. It is not worth the risk.

In part I believe this because of my experience in December. In December I contracted an illness which is the worst I had ever been through in my life. At the time, until I just couldn’t anymore, I wrote a fictionalized series of posts about some of my experience which I titled “The Death Plague.”

My roommate was also sick during this period for a full month. Her experience was prolonged fevers including a point where she had not been out of her bed in three days. I know this because she called me to beg for soup where she had not had the energy to feed herself in days. Something I would not have noticed where we had different work and sleep schedules.

At the time, we both knew the symptoms we experienced where atypical for the flu and were not bacterial. The more we have learned about Covid-19 the more certain we have grown that the atypical symptoms match up with Covid-19. Including the fact that my roommate is still experiencing symptoms we have learned other long-haulers experience from Covid-19.

I don’t know what my recovery will look like from here. I have been largely quiet on my experiences up to now. Reasons for this include the uncertainty of what I had, a complete lack of energy to deal with anything beyond what I had to, the extreme difficulty I have writing, skepticism from others, and more. I’m sharing now because I want others to know they are not alone, and because I want to remember.

I believe that I am in a long-haul recovery from contracting Covid-19 in July, and I believe I had the disease in December 2019 as well.

Launch day for A Mighty Fortress is coming up quick. Next Tuesday in fact. I’ve enjoyed the story trailers for eight of the stories in the anthology. Each story is written by a terrifically talented author and I can’t wait to read them all. In the meantime, I’ve collected all the trailers for you below. Which are you the most excited for?