The man I love and with whom I intend to spend the rest of my life formally asked me to marry him last Saturday night (6/14). Yet even though I knew that day was coming—we’d been discussing it for weeks, and we even chose my engagement ring together—I hadn’t fully anticipated what would come next: the flurry of correspondence with everyone in our lives, the wedding planning, and also a permeating desire to bask in the glow of a celebratory occasion, time permitting. Consequently last Sunday, I had a choice awaiting me: spend the day with my fiancé or set up in my bedroom with a cup of tea and knock out Chapter 8 of Book 2. There was no contest, really. I mean, I’m never getting engaged again, am I? I’ll never have that sun-filled day after again, whereas there’s a Sunday evening somewhere not too far away where I can lock myself in the bedroom and redraft 4,000 words at lightning speed.
A halcyon glow is illuminating all the days ahead until our big day, which we’re hoping will be in October of this year, and to get it done, there is an unfortunate lack of time for much else. I’ve had barely the occasion to sit down and reply to emails from kind folks wishing us well, let alone the chance to put my brain to the task of refining prose. This blog post alone is writ by means of putting a second mortgage against borrowed time, and I still have a fields and fields worth of matters to see to before my eyes find their nightly rest tonight.
While I hate to announce it, the serialized release of Book 2 is now on hiatus until November at the soonest. Thank you to all of you who have been faithfully reading the new chapters as I’ve put them out, because you’re the reason I’m still doing this. (If you’re totally desperate to keep reading, I might be convinced to share with you the rest of the book, but that invitation is issued with a caveat that you’re reading an unrefined book that is subject to vast changes in the chapters ahead, so you really are better off to wait at this point.)
When I started planning this back in March, I had no idea that I’d be planning a wedding in June. You can’t really plan life, can you?
Thank you again for your understanding, and I’ll do my best to stop back here over the next few months and drop off some prose/poetry whenever I can.
♥ EAB