Well, well, well... times change. The sun is shining through the clouds.

A little breathing space. I hoped for it for years. Decades. But all we got was darkness and the ugliness of perfectly legal greed. 

Yes, we survived. Yes, I still have multiple full-body disabilities, and I'm getting older by the day. My husband's health issues are increasingly complicated. It's a good thing we're adaptable people. We made it. Others haven't... I wish they had held out for another "emotional springtime" episode. 

It's starting to look a lot like springtime in eastern Kentucky. Redbud trees grace the hills and ridges with delicate lavendar bloom. Winter isn't over yet; we won't plant any cold sensitive vegetable, fruit, or flowering plants until after the wild blackberries have bloomed and risk of frost is done for the season. Daffodils still have heavy green heads in our mountainside yard, though there are brilliant yellow blossoms to be seen in more sheltered areas. We can't rule out more snow, nonetheless. 

To our great surprise, with the advent of short-sleeves weather, we've been granted a respite from the worst of the stress. Housing issues, struggles with keeping foods not harmful me, those are things had become familiar discomforts. More than ten years after our bare survival was dealt a near-killing blow, the pressure is off, at least for a short time. It's a huge relief. 

I even finished a long-time project, the de Oro world manuscript. New Year's Eve saw us finally living in safe, solid housing. I made the decision not to self-publish it right away, and I don't regret it. For once, I figured entering a contest might be better odds than buying a state lottery ticket. Not being a fan of most contests, it was as close as I could get to thumbing my nose at the darkling universe. I simply decided to reach for the stars. If I don't touch one, that's part of life. At least I tried. 

As a result, I'm quietly celebrating by getting restarted on a barely-begun manuscript. I have several pending, but let them all slide rather than worry about even one more thing. Getting relief meant cleaning up files, digging out old ones, organizing, and choosing what to move on next. I can't get to the research materials still in storage for one story. Two others didn't feel right. Another is a prequel to some projects needing revamped, and two others are sequels to those. I may someday collect and publish my poetry, but it's just for fun (I'm not a good poet, though I love to read poetry). Nor am I worried about any memoirs... for what, after all? I've done nothing notable, and I'm no one special in the greater scheme of things. It came down to two: a horror story not yet fully gelled in my mind, and the option of a sequel to the just-finished novel, de Oro.

I'm calling it Honor's Child.

Nothing in the de Oro world is easy. As it has always been for most lifetimes, the things most worth having are not easy to come by. If asked, I could not put a name to the genre I most enjoy reading or writing, until a few nights ago, when I chanced upon a literary agent webinar. In the discussion, it dawned on me that what she was calling "upmarket" hit close to what I attempt to write. A blend of several commercial genres written with care and artistry is what the term seems to refer to, though I haven't set out to play the highbrow. (That's another story, but I assure you, this revelation made me laugh so hard...) And so, in my blessedly dim ignorance, I may have stumbled into the light all on my own. Nothing in my world is easy, either. 

I will have to wait months to find out if de Oro might be held worthy, if we might be given another, however brief, respite from complicated aspects of our lives. And that's okay. If it doesn't get any attention in the contest, I fully intend to move on. I may lob it at a publisher not requiring an agent, or, if all else fails, I may self-publish, put a copy on my home shelves, and enjoy the sight of it. Because I know there are things in it that needed said, because I scraped up enough bald, ballsy gumption to just finish the thing. Because it's worthy in my mind, as are the characters who played out the hard finish. The characters formed of composited real human beings whose lives were, and in some cases still are, worse than mine. 

While I wait, I'll have good company. The story isn't over as long as there are lives to be lived. In Honor's Child life goes on. Hard times and beauty. 

And that, my friends, is why I plan to tell the story. Be damned if anyone doesn't like it. Springtime will come again, with or without my participation or theirs. Let the flowers bloom.