Hey everyone, so as promised, update on what the goobly gook happened with my computer.

Short answer: the April 18 update.

For those who aren’t aware, Windows launched a major update that started staggered roll-out on April 18th. Problem: the code of the update reacted poorly to one of the top free anti-virus softwares available by the company Avast, including ones such as AVG. Guess what I have used for YEARS with no problems? Yeah. No fun. In addition to causing issues, it also wiped out all prior save-points, so there was no way of me just undoing it so I could function. I had to renew my warranty with Dell to get a backup save-point for Windows to start from. (I’ve also changed anti-virus companies, not as a slight to AVG, but because I didn’t want to go through this again.) But I’ve gone through the update (again), and I am almost completely back in business, just have to get GIMP re-installed.

Then Tsuki took a turn for the worst. I thought she was at least maintaining weight, but no. In addition to that, her breathing had gotten odd in a manner similar to how it had gotten when she was a kitten and then again last year. The vet and I started trying to get her to turn around or at least make it through the weekend so the vet could try and do an x-ray…but it was too much for her, and we lost her to a heart attack. I had to get through my grieving, and that was so hard. It was the first time I was present for a pet’s death, and she had been my whole world for eight years. Kari has been by my side constantly since then, but I don’t have the heart to get her a new companion. I know that it wasn’t bringing Kari in that caused the issue–it just exasperated the situation. But I still can’t do it. I’ll probably stick to one cat until I have to start from scratch, and then I’ll get siblings to keep me distracted…

Speaking of distractions, I used a lot of them to get through these very hard weeks. I turned to Zelda: Wind Waker for a bit, because that is my go-to grieving distraction and always has been. Before her heart attack, I just saw Ocean’s 8. And I did a little work. One thing I did was participate in two “pitch” events on Twitter. I’ll probably do a post on my experiences with those as a blog post, because not a lot of people talk about them or overly promote their success rate, so I’d like to do something that has my personal experiences as well as some statistics behind it. I did send out a few more queries, slowly working my way through the list of options and then I’ll be looking into self-publishing.

I also started two different WIP original works, rather than just touch on my fanfics, and worked on the joint MMO I’m developing with Ginny. So what are the WIPs? One is set in a shared universe of mine and Ginny’s, dealing with a teenage werewolf pack, a female vampire who isn’t fully grown yet, and family relations. Because I am a sucker for complicated family stories, apparently. The other is just a bundle of weirdness that is basically me taking a fanfic idea and going, “How could I make this original?” I obviously don’t have extreme high-hopes for the second, but you know, Ro (the vampire) is currently stonewalling me, so it’s something to work on. As for the MMO, we’ve established where we want to be before we get the blog up and going, so I’m trying to poke away at it and get us to where hopefully sometime next year we can reveal it all and get everyone excited. 🙂

Hopefully I’ll be back to a more regular schedule now. Short of you know, more drama or emergencies. (Please no more of those, I am at the end of my limits.) I’ll be back with my comments on pitch contests next weekend, and to follow with reviews of Ocean’s 8 and…something, we’ll see what happens.