Life Update!

 I realize I haven’t been on this blog in a while. I’ve had several major life updates since January, so I figured it was time.

The first thing I did in the new year was give my book out, yet again, to my wonderful friends and family who’d agreed to beta read for me. This made me rewrite the ending… which I like a lot better, which I believe is more fun. Then I found out I was pregnant again. As I navigated the parasitic symptoms of my first trimester (haha, yes, I wanted this baby) and motherhood with my toddler, I contacted an editor my SIL recommended to me. He worked on her first three chapters and her query letter. She got a book deal for her book Death Tango by Lachi! It’s to be released in the upcoming year, and I’m so excited and happy for her! We both went on a cruise with family about 10 years ago and talked late into the night about our dreams of becoming authors. Now she’s finally done it!

But I digress. I contacted the editor, who agreed to take on my first three chapters and my query letter. This is something I am happy I paid for. His advice was invaluable. He was exactly what I needed. Still, I couldn’t help wallowing for a while in self-doubt before pulling myself together and starting revisions. I stopped querying as I rewrote the first three chapters (*cough* a better description of this time would be I agonized and cried and internally screamed and wallowed some more while I rewrote), which has taken me months. Concurrent with the following life details below. I would write, then hate everything I wrote and put it aside, then feel guilty I wasn’t writing and pick it back up again. I’d go on walks and bounce ideas off of friends/hubby while reviewing the editor's notes. All I wanted to do was start writing something else (the fantasy book I trunked years before, which I now have a burning desire to finish). I had to tell myself I wasn’t allowed to write anything else until I was satisfied with The Séance Crews’ first three chapters for querying.

Subsequently, around late April, my husband and I went into shock when he was told by his company that we’d be leaving Finland after almost 6 years of living there. I was not fired or anything; I just moved to another site. They wanted us to move back to the States over the late summer. My husband tried to extend our stay until after our second baby was born, but that was also a no-go. Suffice it to say I was furious. I did not want to move internationally while pregnant with a 2-year-old and a dog. I wanted to have our second baby in Finland. My husband's boss didn’t give us a flying flight, so in a hurried state of extreme moving, we sold most of our belongings, donated them, and packed as much as possible for the international flight. We ended up leaving Finland at the beginning of June. This was for two reasons: me being pregnant and our dog.

I am incredibly fortunate and privileged to have such amazing friends. They rallied with us and helped us get rid of things, helped us pack, helped us clean, and helped us repaint over my son's bedroom walls (which my husband and I painted right before he was born). My parents, too, spent a ton of money on flying out and taking back bags with them. Without all of their support, I would have gone through many more emotional breakdowns than I did. I do not recommend moving internationally while pregnant.

Then, we had to figure out flight times because of our dog. We couldn’t fly straight to Louisiana in the summer with her. There’s a flight ban on pet travel during summer because of the extreme heat.  So, we had to do a layover in Iceland with Icelandair and fly into New York City at around 10pm. We had to fly in at night because of the heat index on the tarmac.

We finally made it back to the States, all of us in one piece, and my son finally slept on the second flight. From New York, we rented a minivan and road-tripped down to Louisiana, stopping to see family along the way and meeting the movers at our storage unit, which we hadn’t seen in 6 years.

I’ve finally managed to unbox all of the boxes, get things ready for my new baby, get my toddler updated in the US healthcare, take my dog to the vet, do many other boring things, and finally finish my first three chapters/query letter! I finally feel like I can relax and breathe.

In addition, I’ve officially started querying again, hooray!

So, there you have it. The life update is complete, and cheers to the next half of 2023.