Well, dear friends, the year is coming to an end. Four weeks now until it’s 2014, and we start the whole merry business of being alive for another year all over again.

That reminds me, I ought to do a recap at some point.

As the days grow shorter, I find myself in an ever darker place, spaced out on lithium and unable or unwilling (I find it hard to tell the difference) to complete even the most basic of daily chores. I’m sitting in front of my computer, mug of tea by my side, much as I have done most of this day, playing Bioshock or dozing away. My eyes feel glazed.

I received the editorial review (the second one) from my publisher again, and disappointingly they’ve rejected it again on the grounds of poor character visualization and dialogue attribution. Basically I don’t describe my characters enough and I don’t make it bleedingly obvious who’s talking. They’ve highlighted examples in the text that I can’t even see a fault in.

I’m still hoping for publication by early next year, and I know I can do the work they’re asking me to do; it’s just that after so long, and so much effort, it’s hard to muster the courage to dive back in.

There’s a lot behind me at the moment, and a lot ahead of me. I’d love to get The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation done before the new year so I can focus on the second book, but I just don’t know if that’s going to happen.

I don’t really know what’s going to happen about anything.

With all these thoughts and all this work, I’ve come to a deciding point, and a difficult decision it’s been to make. However, for my sake and for my book’s sake, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to ‘disappear’ for a little while, just hunker down, bide my time, and bring myself to work on my book. As such, I’ll be taking a break from satiswrites.com for the next few weeks, hopefully to reappear sometime around the new year. I’ll miss you all, and I’ll look forward to having more to say in the coming months, but for now, December needs to be a quiet month. I hope you don’t mind too much.

I might pop up here or there just to offer a season’s greeting, but Thought of the Week will be stopping at least until January 1.

With much love,

Satis