I'm back!

Okay, so, I didn't plan on such a long hiatus, but here we are. I apologize because I deleted all of my youtube content, which broke the links to the old videos I posted. I will leave the original blog posts posted, more as a timestamp because I can't keep going backwards and delete everything every time I sink into depression.

Unfortunately, I don't mean to overshare, but the death of a loved one finally caught up to me and because of the pandemic, I became overwhelmed and shut down. My grandfather passed away in April of 2017 and it finally caught up with me. I don't know if I was in denial or what it was, but my head was a mess and I tried to push through it.

I suppose his death would've been easier to handle if it wasn't a suicide, but I won't dig any deeper than that. I've been in therapy since 2020, been to two therapists, and am on my third one.

She's a good therapist and introduced me to EDMR, which has been an extremely helpful tool and has helped me push through a lot of horrible events in my life.

I then suffered from the worst case of writer's block in my life and went three years without writing anything at all. Three years. I had essentially given up, deleted all of my content, and abandoned all of my projects. My mind was scattered and with too much going on, I couldn't figure out what to do.

Fortunately, I had enough sense to not delete my written work. I did an inventory and had discovered that I've written, to this date (8-24-2023), 98 short stories, 69 poems, 7 books(The Pumpkin Man, Dreamland, Dragon Academy: The Last GloomWing, Mommy's a Stranger, A Fool in Love, Dragon Academy: A Journey Far and Wide, and The Golden Throne). I think I wrote them in that order, I can't remember.

The bulk, at least 95%, was written before 2020. I am excited to announce that I am now working on my eighth book, Islands Apart, which is a story in the same vein as Mommy's a Stranger.

The longest thing I've written is The Golden Throne, clocking in at around 140,000+ words, and I expect Islands Apart to be at least 150,000+ words in length. This is about 600 print pages in length.

I plan on writing 5,000 words a day Monday through Thursday, which will yield 20,000 words per week. It should take nine weeks to complete Islands Apart, and then I plan on writing another book, though I do not know the name yet.

It's also worth mentioning that I will have to rebrand everything and that I plan on doing a dark themed approach. Not dark as in horror, but dark as in THIS SCREEN IS TOO BRIGHT!

It's also also also worth mentioning that I am considering something called a Black Volume, which will be free and downloadable on this website. The Black Volume would consist of most of my written works, all but maybe six of them, and I would provide insight behind each story, poem, and book featured therein. Now, because of the size of such a collection, I think it is unreasonable to try and edit all of these works, and because of that, it would be irresponsible to expect payment. The books are rough drafts, expect for Mommy's a Stranger and the first Dragon Academy, and almost all of the stories are rough drafts.

I had considered publishing them as is, more as a staple in time, to put a stake in the heart of the project and leave it be, because though the works are written, I feel like I have to edit all of them before I can move onto something else, which interferes with current projects.

I simply cannot edit them all, but I want to share them with the world, and because of that, I feel it's reasonable to post the Black Volume as a PDF and people can print the stories they like and ignore the ones they don't.

There is one more thing: I plan on publishing Mommy's a Stranger as a legitimate book.

But, in summation, the Black Volume would serve more as a mental severance from the stories within so that I can focus on one project at a time and produce higher quality work.

I cannot move into the future if the fingers of the past keep maneuvering me, and I believe the Black Volume will alleviate that.

Now that I've said all of that, I would like to discuss the current game plan. I had rewritten an old story over the past month. I believe in 2019 I wrote a story called Ghosts of Atlantis, and well, I rewrote it. It's the same situation as Cadaver, where I wrote the first draft in 2013, then rewrote it in 2018.

I had a blast rewriting the novella and it clocked in at around 19,000 words. I had managed to write 2,000 words a day and shook off the rust. I am excited about Islands Apart, and approaching this second wind with a new found resolve and breath of confidence.

Rather than trying to do too much at once, I am going to take it in slow strides and my first step in this blog post. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I appreciate your attention and support.

Cheers, MB