WIP Wednesday: Ups and downs

I detailed a bit on my process on this week's Super Powered. If you haven't subscribed to my biweekly newsletter, make sure you do so to get some exclusive content from yours truly.

My plan for 2018 is to greatly expand my writing output for my work. I want to re-focus on Lightweight, Quadrant and new character Rey Diablo. Over the course of the year, I hope to build those three characters into important centerpieces of my ongoing work, even as I keep working on other stories from other corners of the expansive Quadrant Universe. In the process, I hope to build a new and unique universe of adventure that everyone can enjoy.

Street Fighter's Dudley is certainly famous for his
Kidney Blow. Can't say I still can't find humor in life.
Image credit: Capcom. 

That doesn't mean I won't have side projects. I am almost at the end of the urban fantasy project I've talked about quite a bit here. I've also started to work to revamp a trilogy of works from years past into a publishable form. The future for where both those projects will debut is still hazy, but once they're finished I hope to line them up with a quality publishing house.

I do have to say work has slowed to some degree in the last week or so. Like always for me, life seems to find a way to screw around with my dreams and desires.

I mentioned in passing my bout with diverticulitis at the end of last year, another in a long list of problems with my guts over the last twelve months. A CT scan was necessary to verify no blockage with the disorder, but that scan picked up something far more troubling. A tiny lump is on the inside wall of my kidney. And such a lump has a 75% chance of being cancerous.

The stupendous news is because of the diverticulitis and the CT scan, they caught the little pea-sized bugger a decade before it would expand enough to cause pain. At the current size, excising it will most likely end any worries about kidney cancer I will have.

So while millions of others are whispering sweet nothings into their loved one's ears, I will start Valentine's Day going under for four hours of surgery on my left kidney. I would be lying if I said I'm not terrified at that proposition. But I have a good hospital, a capable surgeon and the hope I can finally get beyond all my health issues once the surgery is complete.

Kidney surgery is no joke. I'll be out of work for over a week and highly limited for a month after that. Pain pills and slow going are a sure thing for the second half of February. I know pain meds often dull my brain enough that focus becomes hard and I'm not sure how much time I will want to spend in a sitting position, but I don't plan to slow down my writing. That doesn't mean it won't happen of course, especially as I have to battle anxiety and depression alongside the ramifications of the surgery.

But I'm staying focused on hope over hysteria. I want to keep bringing great super powered fiction to everyone reading this and I don't plan to stop now.

So wish me luck, pray for me, or just send good vibes my way. Or do the one thing that makes every writer's heart grow two sizes and write a review for one of my books on Amazon or Goodreads. Whatever means you take, I will need all of them in the next few weeks. Thank you everyone for all the support you've given and I hope will continue to give as I strive to overcome this.