For the first time in years, I find myself without an imminent deadline.

It’s the strangest feeling, and it’s having the most freeing effect on my mind and emotions.

I’ve finished all my editing projects that will be due this year. (I have one starting in mid-December, but there is time scheduled in for a two-week break over the holidays and it won’t be due until January.) I finally published The Sphinx’s Heart, and the majority of the launch activities are behind me. I’ve even started working on my next book, but I feel as though I’m still on track to reach my goal timeline there.

And, for the first December since 2015, I am not about to start a cycle of magazine reporting for the next issue.

So, is this what it feels like to be all caught up?

(On work. Not my housework. Please ignore the box of Halloween costumes still sitting in my living room. Ahem.)

Okay, so you probably noticed me slip in there that I finally published The Sphinx’s Heart! Woot!

As I suspected, the book turned out to be a whopper—305,000 words, or over 1,000 manuscript pages (which I fit into 838 for the print version). Yikes. But the early readers don’t seem to mind. I particularly loved this review the book received from an advanced reader:

So, now that that’s behind me, what next?

Yes, I’m always looking for what’s next. And the logical answer might seem to be “write Book Three,” but to be honest, writing this book was a long, arduous project and took a lot out of me. I need a break and some time to refill the creative well. I need to do research, and think. These books require so much thinking!

For the last couple of weeks since it left my hands, I’ve been reading way more fiction books than normal. (Not that that would take much, let’s be honest.) And I’ve been finishing an editing project, which I finally put to rest on Tuesday. So it’s really only been this week that my mind has finally been able to relax a little.

So this is what it feels like.

Unfortunately, no matter how many deadlines crunches I’ve got my head down to meet at any given point, life still goes on. Tomorrow I’ll be watching the live stream of my aunt’s funeral, who was recently killed in a car crash. I have a lot of uncles and aunties, and Barb is the second one I’ve lost. Both have been on the youngest end of the spectrum on the respective sides of my family they belonged to. It’s sudden. And hard. And one more person and situation to grieve in a year that has had so very many.

Having less work to focus on has left me with more time to feel overwhelmed and helpless at how little I can do to help those suffering because of lost loved ones or livelihoods, whether due to a pandemic, natural disasters like the flooding in BC, or the accidents and illnesses that are always with us.

I’m trying to relax and slow down and let myself process all the feelings I’ve mostly been pushing aside for the last year. But I also feel the compulsion to do, and what can I do but continue to write stories that bring hurting people a little joy, and point them to the source of true joy who is the only Person who could possibly have gotten me this far? And who is holding Aunty Barb in his arms right now?

I don’t allow myself to just rest in his arms often enough. But right now, I’m trying.

So this is what it feels like.

Huh.