What the hell do you mean, it's already the end of July? (aka where the fuck does the time go?)

I think the post title sums up the way I'm feeling pretty accurately right now.
I have so many things I'm trying to finish and seem to be going nowhere real fucking fast. It's already been a month since I mentioned my new About the Author project I'd been writing and I just spent this past weekend in a mad dash to finish and edit it so I could put it up for my blog post today. 'Cause it's already been a month. It should not have taken me a month to do this...

You see it here anywhere? No? Me neither.

Same goes for Curse. Still struggling to get through my edits and it's been over two months now with at least another month's worth of work ahead of me before it's finished.
I feel like I'm drowning right now, trying to keep my head above water and only just surviving.
Yes, that means more than just keeping up with my writing deadlines. My money situations just seem to be getting worse and worse, making me more stressed and less able to focus.
Vicious cycle and whatnot.

On the plus side, this month finally brought answers to my weird health issues that have been plaguing me for the past year. We ruled out a dozen awful possibilities - like Lyme disease, Lupus, for awhile we even feared M.S.

Nope -  After being poked, prodded and zapped with electricity, I just have a severe migraine disease with Aura (which means it effects my eyes) kinda like Lewis Carrol, I was told. No wonder Wonderland is so trippy! I wanna laugh at that, because headaches don't seem so serious, and when I tell people migraines leaving lesions on my brain are causing my neurological issues, blurred vision, extreme fatigue, chest pains, numbness and a host of other insidious seeming symptoms, they look at me like I'm nuts.

Case in point - when I first told a certain relative of mine the neurologist's final diagnosis, their reaction was to tell me all about the "migraine" they'd had the night before (probably from drinking too much red wine, tbh). *dramatic eyeroll*

Yeah, that's why I didn't really tell people.
I mean, everyone gets headaches once in a while - just not these kind I guess. Probably why it had never even occurred to me that all my weird symptoms were caused by migraines in the first place. I was told I get what they call "silent" migraines as well, meaning all the migraine symptoms only sometimes without the head pain.

You know what part of it annoys me the most? I mean, really frustrates me and pisses me off?

That damned aura! My vision alters during a migraine - blurs and is hard to focus - which means it's really hard and kinda uncomfortable to read. TO READ! And these migraine episodes are frequent with me, and sometimes last for a couple of days at a time. You ever try to edit when reading is painful? Yeah, so it effects my work and my enjoyment of words. Way to ruin things, brain!

Anyway, now I know it's not a death sentence - just a debilitating state of being - because it can't be cured, only assuaged with meds to dull the symptoms as they come.
This little adventure sunk my family into even more debt / stress for medical bills that my insurance didn't cover in full - tests and procedures to give me peace of mind, even though I'm no better off, or feeling any better than I was before I went to the doctor in the first place...

Sorry, I just needed to vent for a moment. The stress levels are only increasing post-diagnosis, and sometimes it's overwhelming and hard to feel positive.

I hate when people whine in blog posts.
I hate even MORE when I whine in blog posts...

Fine. Change of subject:
How would you guys feel if I started posting Tuesday Teasers for Curse? I'm thinking if I can get my shit together in the next few days I'll start posting snippets ASAP up until it's ready for release. And I should have at least the first part of the new About the Author posted by the end of this week.

Thanks for being patient with me. Things get kinda heavy from time to time, but I'm gonna keep bulldozing through. It's either that, or give up - and I don't do that shit.

See you in August!

Curse - Cover Reveal and First Teaser for Book Four!

Well friends and lovely readers, though my editing is still slogging along at an agonizing pace, I have finally bitten the bullet and decided to share a bit more about the fourth book in The Crow Series with you. Personally, I'm hoping by being public with it, it'll help motivate me to get the damn thing finished. It's a good book, and an important one for the series, but for some reason my brain just doesn't want to get involved. I think it's "getting towards the end" syndrome, seeing the final book on the horizon and desperately avoiding the culmination and ending of something I have grown to love and enjoy over the past few years.

My mind keeps drifting off to other stories I have in the works, books I'll be focusing on once The Crow Series is finished. I'm excited to get back to work on Firechild, which I've returned to writing lately - as well as editing Songbird of Souls, which is probably the next book I will release after Curse and before the fifth Crow book, Redeem (Yes, I did just tell you the title of the final book. Can't recall if I've mentioned it before and I'm too tired to go read through previous posts to see if this is new knowledge or not.)

I haven't officially set the release date yet for Curse, mostly because I don't want to set a date I might not be able to keep, but right now I'm shooting for the last week in August, provided I can get my ass moving and get the editing wrapped up satisfactorily by then.

I've actually had the front cover done for over a month now. I'm still making little tweaks here and there, but for the most part this is it:

Usually, this is where I'd post the blurb but I'm not quite happy with the current one I'm using, so I've decided instead to give you a sneak peek at Chapter One. (Please remember, this is not the final version and is subject to change during the final round of edits.)