First of all, let me apologize: I have been gone for quite some time without any explanation. I’ll give you the short rundown first for all those who don’t necessarily want the ins and outs and then the long version for everyone who’d like to know more.

TL;DR: The short version is that I have been (and still am) very sick. This isn’t new but it has been especially bad since April of this year and I had to conserve as much energy as I could to focus on healing. As a result, while I have continued writing (I even finished OMF in the meantime!), I didn’t upload anywhere but over on my Patreon account. I am slowly doing better now so I’ll start making up for all of the chapters we’ve missed over here (and on the other sites like Wattpad, ScribbleHub, and Tapas). Things will still be slow and might be irregular, all depending on how I am doing on each specific day. Hopefully, I’ll continue to get better so we can actually get back to a regular schedule though. I’ll try to keep you updated on what’s happening more often in the future.

Now, onto the long version:

I usually don’t like to talk about any of this as I see my stories as a kind of escape. I want you guys to be able to come here and read something to forget whatever horrible things are currently going on elsewhere in the world or in your life, or just to have some fun whenever you feel like it. The truth is that life hasn’t been very kind to me and my family in the past few years though and it has started to show for some time. I’ll give you a trigger warning at this point just in case, although I won’t go into detail.

To make a very long story short, back in 2021, things just kind of went to hell all at once: You might remember how I posted that one of my novels had been plagiarized but that was really the least of my worries at that time, although it was the one thing I did talk about publically. Apart from that, I was diagnosed with a chronic condition that is only now slowly starting to be under control (not because it’s that bad but because my GP kinda dropped the ball between several changes of assistant doctors who were usually in charge).
Much worse, my father was diagnosed with cancer and while he is also doing better by now, it was a very long and scary fight that came with the knowledge that despite winning this round, there will always be a chance for this to recur. In the same vein, my grandmother had a stroke that left her bedbound and we didn’t know for months whether she’d even make it at all. My grandfather who had also been sick for a long time and was in and out of the hospital far too many times and for too many operations didn’t get to see the end of that year.
And even though we are lucky enough to live in a country with good and affordable healthcare, our specific circumstances meant that we also took a strong financial hit. One that wasn’t made any better by the fact that the area I work in outside of writing novels tanked severely. It got so bad that I could finally only get by with assistance from the government.

It’s probably not too surprising when I say that all of this strained my mental health to the point where I developed depression. I don’t know when exactly it started, just that it was bad, and that it took me too long to actually get the help I very much needed.
If you’re ever in this situation: Reach out to your GP as soon as you can. I didn’t trust mine that much thanks to the frequent changes to personnel I mentioned but she really came through on this one. I’ve been on anti-depressants since April now and in therapy since the end of July, and I’m very, very slowly doing better. Not great but better and for the time being, I’m already very happy with that.

Well, during this time, writing has been very hard on the one hand but has also been a source of comfort on the other. It’s odd and I sometimes don’t know what to make of it either. It’s hard because I can usually only write when I’m in a good mood. If I’m sad or angry or … just feel empty, as depression mostly caused me to, then I have a very hard time getting more than a few paragraphs at a time pinned down. As a result, even a single chapter takes forever, I fall behind on what my schedule should be, and I have an even harder time making up for any of it because I start feeling worse when I look at the long list of things I should do but don’t have the energy for. It’s a vicious cycle that I couldn’t figure out how to get out of so the only way was to cut out everything I felt I didn’t absolutely have to do and try to write one chapter at a time, hoping that I’d somehow manage to finish something and reduce my tasks further so I would hopefully manage again.

Now, after knowing what has been going on, let’s talk about my stories because I like that topic a lot better. As I mentioned: They are also a big comfort to me and while writing has been slow, I have never stopped thinking about them or coming up with new ideas for the future. So, the question is: Where do we stand now and where are we going?

As I mentioned in the TL;DR, I actually finished Oh. My. Fate?! during this time. I’ll start with posting this and will prepare the first chapters tonight so they’ll go up tomorrow. As I’m still not doing great, I’ll try to do two or maybe three chapters a day but probably won’t be able to swing more than that. Maybe some days will be better and there’ll be a big update but there might also be days when I actually don’t have the energy to do anything. We’ll see.

Apart from OMF, I’ve also picked up RSH again (which was paused until OMF reached the point where both stop overlapping plot-wise so I’d be able to write RSH without causing consistency issues between both) and actually made some progress there as well even if it is much slower than I had hoped it would be. I’ve announced it over on Patreon but after this one is done (which’ll be some time from now, it seems) we’ll do another related series. I’ll give you more information when the time comes as it’s really some time until then. I just like to try and look forward to these kinds of things now so wanted to mention it already, no matter how far off it might be.

RMN is somewhat on track with relatively steady updates on Patreon. This should also be the story I resume updating right after OMF, I guess. I first want to see how things go so it’ll probably be a week or so of only OMF updates before I start adding this one though. It’s baby steps for me right now.

OCN is on a hiatus for the time being (has been for a while on Patreon as well) and will likely stay that way for a while longer. The comparatively longer chapters are an issue for me and I’d rather go steady with the short-chaptered stories than try to do everything at once and fail miserably at all of it. So, I’ll likely only pick this one back up after RSH is completely finished and maybe after RMN gets there as well. It’s not that far off any longer but we’ll also see about that.

So, in summary: The first OMF chapters are going up tomorrow and hopefully daily after that (with 2-3 chapters each). RMN will likely follow sometime next week. I’ll update you again for RSH after I see how things go. OCN is on an indefinite hiatus until I finish something else because I still can’t deal with too much stuff at once.

Now, you’re completely up to date. I’ll try to do more announcements in the future if there is something but haven’t really thought about how. Maybe I’ll do something with the sidebar on the main page or revive my Twitter account or something. We’ll also see about that. I just felt that I owe you this big explanation after all this time of no communication. I’m also just happy to be back even if it’s not at full strength yet. I missed writing more and posting everywhere as I do love my stories and sharing them with people.