An Eye Opener
In a consistent turn of events, my inconsistent website usage has resulted in a mere three updates this year, with this one included to make that heady number.
Somewhat good reasons, though. Well, reasons. I'd hesitate to call them "good".
Work on The Unspeakable Awaits has continued, albeit slowly. Despite there being a constant flow of ideas I've struggled this year to put myself in front of a screen as I'm suffering from an issue with my left eye that makes reading text an absolute pain in the arse. Quite the ailment for a writer. Or photographer for that matter. It's a relatively long standing issue. One that I went to an optician about when it first began way back in 2007. Nothing wrong with me, they said. Try a doctor. Tried a doctor, they said try an optician.
I'd just started my job and didn't want to endanger that with any word of this, and with opticians and doctors not being bothered, I felt I had to just carry on with my invisible problem. Looking back, it was really quite a manageable issue back then, if one that made itself known all day every day. Since that point the problem continued to get worse. For various reasons and the lack of medical interest I felt I had to just get on with things. This year thought, it got a lot worse. It had gradually been degrading, but alongside it my right eye had been getting weaker, perhaps from doing all the work. I went to an optician again, finally, with some difficulty, and was quickly told there was a haemorrhage in my eye and I'd be referred to hospital. This was a weird moment, after so long, the problem was visible. It was real. There was, at this point, a suggestion that something could be done. "Laser or injection," the optician said all to casually. Hospital day came, and without going into enormous detail two doctors suggested there was no appetite to try anything and there was no treatment available. To have 17 years of frustration, followed by a few weeks of hope, only to then have the finality of "No treatment" uttered was an absolute kick in the teeth. Might as well have been a kick in the eye. And send a boot the way of my stones while you're at it. The news didn't do me any good, and I had been avoiding writing as a result. Nothing has really changed on the eye front aside from it being a little worse since the hospital appointment. Hilariously they want to "make sure it doesn't get worse" but with no option for any treatment and me telling them it has degraded continually over 17 years, I'm not really sure of their endgame here. It's enormously frustrating, infuriating, and depressing to know I'll probably not see anything properly again. I do have my right eye, but the input from the left interferes with it all the time (even if it is covered). I've glasses to that help insofar as they give my right eye enough of a boost that at times I can ignore what the left eye wants to show me, but it takes time.
Today I sat down and wrote for the first time in some time. I wrote a whole chapter of The Unspeakable Awaits. I need to get it out as it has been plaguing me. Even with this shite eye, I want to get this story and the other ones I have planned out. I'm not the fastest of writers, as anyone that has been reading my mere five releases since 2016 will know. But I do still have a lot to tell those who are willing to read the results. I also want to make sure The Unspeakable and anything after comes out at a standard I'm happy with - I'm not going to rush anything out for the sake of it. So, that is my excuse. In a decent turn (relatively), 43k words of my next book are written less than a year after the release of The Dead and the Rotten, and that is far more than I managed in that time frame after The Vile Realm. I'll get there. I think. And now, for anyone that read Grim Work, the fate potential fate offered to Marigold at the hands of Korag may now make a little more sense.