Hey everybody! It’s me, Eris!

Orrrr y’all who might know me as Sam! I am still her too!

As disappointing as some of you might find it that I’m not immediately releasing a new story or poem, I think it’s pretty essential to let y’all know some of what has been going on.

First off, I’ve been working on getting hormones. Seeing a doctor about trying to get that rolling. I’d been feeling miserable. I decided I couldn’t stand that anymore. So I threw myself at it headfirst.

In the process of the standard ‘let’s-make-sure-this-won’t-kill-you’ tests, they found out I have a genetic condition that predisposes me to liver damage. I absorb iron from everything I eat and a Lot of it and don’t have a thing that makes my liver tell my small intestine to Stop absorbing iron. This has resulted in a few delays while we figure out how to address that. I started trying for hormones ~six or seven months ago? Probably longer? haha. I haven’t got them yet. I’m sure some people have dealt with worse delays. It doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. But I have been delayed. I’m glad we found out about the condition because too much iron in your blood can cause strokes as well as the liver damage? I think? And just dying out of nowhere would have been pretty bad.

I started therapy a year ago or so. I can’t remember if I told y’all that. It has been helpful. I am feeling better on that front. Mentally I think I’m in a better state in the last month or so than I’ve been in a long, long time.

And… well… I’m unemployed again. That much is kinda on me. I dropped out of my old job because I was having what I thought were panic attacks (and the commute was a little brutal at an hour round trip). Um. They weren’t panic attacks.

I was having seizures. I have epilepsy. I can no longer drive legally. Sometimes I have seizures that are bad enough I lose consciousness. Sometimes I have seizures that are short but disturbing and leave me incapable of coherent speech or communication for the better part of ten to twenty minutes. I’m taking pills that suppress them but if I stop for any amount of time they could come back and worse. The lesion correlated with them is nearby my speech center and if they tried to operate they could damage my ability to talk and permanently. As far as we know right now it has not been growing or getting worse. There’s the good news: it probably isn’t malignantly cancerous.

So… the rest of the last six months have been me finding these things out and dealing with them. Basically. I have been racing back and forth between doctors trying to get to the point that I’m Well. My light at the end of this tunnel has been the hormones. In a week or so I’m going to be checking in with my hormone doctor– she’s been trying to get me to the point where I can take them and faster, and said she’d be looking into things, if not actual hormones, I can do that will mitigate some of my dysphoria.

That’s pretty much it! I am going to be trying to post stories and/or poems here more often but there’s no guarantee, as always, that it’ll happen. Hope y’all had happy holidays and have a lovely new year if I don’t talk to ya sooner than that.

Love,
Eris of Discord
(Sam Oliver)

Chapter nineteen is up. But that’s not quite as important as college.

Oh, it’s very important- I’ll still update as often as I can, mondays and fridays regular. I hope to finish this story before the end of the first semester- a bold goal, to be sure.

But that’s fine. I’m sure it’ll work out in my favor. I’m taking about four classes this semester- it cost a lot of money, but it always does. And I plan on acing every course, if I’m allowed to do that. Am I allowed to do that? I hope I’m allowed to do that.

I’ve also been working on a short story which, eventually, I may post on a separate page.  Depends on how long it takes to finish it. It shows a lot of promise!

But that’s all I’ve got for now, I’m afraid. Bottom line is that college starts next week- I’m going to be busy- well, busier- so I’m just gonna count on you guys, gals and others to make things interesting. Thanks for reading, everyone, and I wish you good fortune in all your future endeavors.

-Eris

PS: THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT THIS IS THE END OF THE STORY.

PSS: UPDATES TO CONTINUE AS NORMAL DESPITE THE WHINING.

Okay, well… I’m going on a two week vacation (which I do every few years). Now, while I’ll try to update as regularly as possible, this’ll mean that, from the 14th on to the 29th, updates will be sparse or not at all. On the other hand, when I get back I can, of course, immediately post at least three, right? So expect the next updates on the 30th. If I can get them to my fan(s) sooner, I will, promise. Just think of it as extra time (if that’s even necessary) to catch up and theorize about what will happen next, I suppose.

Since there are four updates we may be missing quite soon, I’d like to take this time to quietly thank those of you who’ve stuck with it from the start. (not that this story has been going on all that long, really)

So thank you very much, everyone. If no one read it I probably wouldn’t post it. Wait, yes I would! I need to post to validate myself as a person who keeps he/r promises.

Thanks again, and seeya when I get back!

-Eris

Well, it was that time of the year again. Really, no excuse, Sam. You can do better than this. I told you, it’s Independence Day, gotta have an update, but you wouldn’t listen.

In lieu of disappointing my eager fan with excuses- though I did watch fireworks and such- I’ll simply say today was complicated and leave it at that. The update for the chapter will be up as soon as I can tomorrow (this) morning. No, I’m not behind, but I will need to modify it a bit to get it to fit with the general scheme of the characters.

Speaking of which…. You may well wonder why Friday’s update was a little longer in the making too.

Or not, I guess. 

But if you did! I rewrote a lot of it. I went over and thought ‘This isn’t right. Summer wouldn’t say these things. Spring is less of an obvious idiot.’

Since it didn’t fit them, I just went in and changed it around. It’s not like the official disk version I’ve got with me always. (though I may well just cut/copy/paste that chapter into my story on my harddrive since I like it better)

Well, that’s about all I know. It’s a little too late for me to think seriously about staying up and messing around much more on my computer. I’m all tired out, it’s been a long weekend. But don’t worry, guys, gals and others. I’ll have that chapter up first thing in the morning.

-Eris

This chapter was short, in my opinion.

With that in mind, I was thinking about posting its twin today as well and undoing all my hard work at keeping ahead of this schedule in the process.

Well, not really. I’m far enough ahead that’s not likely to be a problem even if I posted a new chapter every day (which would swamp people and basically make it impossible for anyone to keep up, I’m sure)

So with that also in mind, I suppose I’ll have to deal with the subpar length and hope everyone enjoyed it anyway. I don’t want to drown you in walls of text. Really I don’t. New chapter’ll be posted monday unless I have a sudden fit of crazy and post it earlier. Don’t get your hopes up though- I’ve been having a few computer troubles lately which’ll make POSTING things easier… and WRITING things harder. But I’ll deal. I’m good at that by now, I should think.

(No, you don’t get a long involved backstory describing why. I’m not THAT nice.)

-Eris

PS:

Anyone who thinks that chapter was just long enough is a HEATHEN and will be given cocoa for sucking up. Thanks, your support is appreciated always!

Anyone who thinks that chapter was too short is one of the TRUE FAITH and will be given cocoa for sucking up. Thanks, your support is also appreciated always, even as you crush my self-esteem and ruin my day!

(you don’t really ruin my day, please keep reading)

Okay, so, I know this isn’t really a story post. Promise there’ll be one come friday, likely some crazy time like ten AM or something, since I literally have nothing better to do than write all day and update my story blog. (You’d think I’d update more often, but I have a schedule and it’s enough to keep to a two day consistentlyrather than miss a lot of a three day workweek)

But I just want to make it absolutely crystal clear- I’m writing because I love it. I can sit down every day and tell a story. I can make the words dance whichever way I want them to- and sometimes it’s clumsy and it’s hard to understand, but heck, most dances are like that, as far as I can tell. Or they were when they were just starting out. I’ve been writing for a while, but my excuse is not knowing how to dance. /horrible analogy

I’m nuts, too, with the way I write. I don’t have a bloody storyboard all set. I know the general direction of my stories, but, to tell you a special secret that’s super, super special and all mine: I’m writing off of what my characters want to do next. Plot’ll come along with them if you write your characters well. I don’t really like to try to plan things out because I know it’ll just deviate. While I love writing enough to write down chapters and chapters at a time, I don’t hold with traditional storyboards.

And you know, that’s probably okay. I’m not really a traditional author. If I could get paid for this stuff that’d be kind of neat, but I mean, it’d sort of feel fake. If I’m really a writer, I should be writing because I love it. Payment should be secondary for me. That’s how I feel about it. There are surely authors out there who are different, who slide away from that ideal. But my stuff is on here for free because I want to share it, not because I care about advertising. If this book  becomes published- and with plans to put the entire thing up here eventually I don’t see how that could happen- I’m not sure I could stomach taking money for it. Yeah, it was a lot of work. Is a lot of work. It’s stuff from my head, I’m baring bits and pieces of me.

But it’s because the characters are so special to me I don’t know if I could sell them. I’m not so conceited as to pretend they’re priceless- nothing is priceless- but the price would be too high. They’re pieces of my soul. In order to take them as your own, you’d have to give me part of yours. And I’m not actually sure if that’s ethical!

Please, no offers of souls for these characters. Really. They’re mine and I’m sharing. I don’t want anything but the knowledge that someone out there enjoys reading my stuff. Even if it’s just me, it’ll make it worth it to push keys on my keyboard until the whole thing is done.

Off topic! That was all off topic. What I mean to say is, I’m writing because I love writing, not for commercial gain. Um. I think. Maybe that was obvious. Was that obvious? I think that was obvious. But I already knew it. So uh. Yeah.

Next chapter’ll be up Friday. If you’ll excuse me, I need to find some breakfast and finish writing the next installment to maintain the buffer.

I hope everyone is enjoying the fourth official chapter. It was as much fun to write as the rest, and as a bonus it seems to have thickened the Plot.

-Eris

Okay! Chapter 2 is up, first of all. Check out the links page if you just need to read that, otherwise I’m sure it’s somewhere in the slog of blog posts. Can’t do much about spoilers! Sorry! Just be careful when I post something new. I’ll update the links page every time I do, so no worries there.

Here’s the deal with when I’ll be posting. I know you’d love to all read the story RIGHT AWAY, but the point of the serial novel is that the author remains sane AND manages to have a regular schedule.

Since I’m neither sane nor schedule prone, you guys and gals can expect the occasional hiccup.

So here’s the schedule (subject to change, but I’ll tell you.)

I’m aiming for posting two chapters a week. That means monday and friday. If it seems like I’m not busy enough, I may just go for something like Monday Wednesday and Friday. We’ll see. Days I’m unlikely to post a chapter: Holidays. Birthdays- if I’m attending a party I’ll post ahead of time about it. When I’m so sick I can’t move. When I’ve fallen so far behind on writing it’s no longer possible to keep up. (Hah! Unlikely. I’ve got a nice buffer of chapters ready, so no worries!)

So again schedule:

Mondays and Fridays until further postage declares otherwise. When exactly is variable, but expect it before 11:00 PM, my time on update day. So go with east coast. Thanks for reading everybody! Hope you enjoy chapter two!

-Eris

I will begin immediately!

My intention is to provide a wealth of material I myself have created, and to provide it to anyone who wishes to see it. Whether it’s in a drawing or a chapter in my latest novel, I’ll do my best to make my latest work visible as soon as possible. My goal is at least a chapter a week, but depending on how much urging I get I think my schedule will be as erratic as my namesake.

That is, quite erratic. I would like to state, for the record, that any resemblance in my books to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, and that also, anyone who steals my work or claims to have written things verbatim the same as my work is wished the best of luck.

That is, I’ve already got my bases covered. It’s my story I’m telling, and even if everyone believes the person who stole rather than me, I’ll still know that it’s my work and mine alone. (A misnomer; in fact all work is derivative in some form. I can claim that it is ‘mine’, but only by copying and pasting could someone reproduce it to such an extent that it would in fact be mine still.) I just want everyone to know that the ideas for my stories were created entirely by me. They may be influenced by work from any number of authors, for I’m a very prolific reader, but I can say that the characters and plots within them are definitely mine.

Well, actually the first story I plan on sharing is one that a friendly fellow writer swapped characters with me in order to write, so perhaps that’s not even entirely accurate. Still, a character that doesn’t evolve with the plot is not a character worth writing. It is my belief that if s/he had written for my character rather than I, the character would have turned out much, much different. Anyway, enjoy what follows- I’ll post them chapter by chapter.

-Eris

PS:

Ah, forgot. Hello. My name is Sam, but you can call me Eris. Everyone who will know me will call me that anyway. This is a writer’s blog- rather, a writer’s story site with the look of a blog. I hope you find something you can enjoy here. I write many different genres [/boast] but in general my stories have a fantasy element to them. Be civil and kind and perhaps I’ll let you stay.