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Back from an Accidental Hiatus

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Back from an Accidental Hiatus

3/27/2020
Last spring, a variety of factors made my life busy and stressful, and my website fell to the wayside. Once I fell out of the practice of posting a piece every couple weeks, I didn't bother remotivating myself over the summer of 2019. Though I continued writing, dust and cobwebs grew across my site.

It wasn't until this crazy season of social distancing and COVID-19 that I finally found some spare time and a little boredom.

"What should I do with myself?" I asked.

"Hey! Remember me?" said my website. "You could clean me up a bit and start publishing again! You're a writer, after all.

"Oh," I said. "You're right."

So I'm back.

Personal Update

This past year has brought a lot of personal growth and some exciting changes in my near future. I have five weeks of class left at Pepperdine, and sadly, they will be online due to California's Safer at Home order. I miss the social aspects of campus, but I've managed to stay in contact with many of my friends thanks to social media.

A note on that: I think that too often, social media detracts from life quality. It distracts from the friends that you really have around you and puts people in the mindset of comparing the quantity of friends and followers. Or comparing oneself to the carefully filtered instagram lifestyles that are all golden hour and laughing with friends. But in recent days, I have truly been appreciative of social media and the era that we live in. Staying at home all day every day is manageable because of iMessage, Facebook, Twitter, and Discord. I'm very grateful for that.

I'm excited to announce that after I graduate from Pepperdine, I will be enrolling in a Creative Writing MFA program at Augsburg University! It's a 3-summer, 2-year low-residency program, so while I take online classes I also hope to be working full-time. As I look forward to these changes, I'm also making arrangements to move to Minneapolis so that I can finally experience four seasons again and, more importantly, live near my girlfriend, Sarah.

Website Update

Those of you who have been with me since the beginning have seen two major website revisions. I recently changed website providers to gain more functions at a price that I could manage. Each provider has different pros and cons, and for the time being Weebly is my best option. I hope that navigating my website remains easy and intuitive, but if not, please contact me and let me know so that I can address any problems that arise.

To that end, I think that the only significant change that might affect my viewers is that not all of my posts will have comment fields after them. Comments can only be posted on my home page or on my social media accounts (links here: Facebook, Twitter, or Patreon). Please let me know what you think of my poetry and stories!

Another blessing and curse that came with switching providers: as I'm redesigning my website, all of my old content is no longer immediately available to the public. Over the upcoming year, I will repost all of my old content, along with plenty of new. So don't worry: anything that you read previously and liked will be made available. It's just a matter of time.

New Content

Given that I will be reposting a lot of my old content over the next year, I want to reassure any of my old readers that there will be plenty of new content I'm releasing, too. I'm working on a handful of new projects that I'm very excited about, but for now I'll keep them close to my chest.

Well, except for two. Or three. I have three new concepts that I'm working on continuously, and can't wait to have enough content to start publishing them.

First: I'm toying with the idea of starting my own superhero webcomic. I make no promises about how soon I can start publishing issues, and I can absolutely promise that the artwork will not be professional. But I hope it'll be a fun and entertaining story. I'll tell you more once I get closer to being able to publish it!

Second: More information about Ethra. I've written several short stories set in this fantasy world, but I've found that it's difficult to do the worldbuilding that the fantasy genre necessitates within the confines of short fiction. While I hope to continually release fantasy fiction as I write it, I can commit to at least releasing informational articles about my fantasy world. If you love nerding out over lore and fictional cities, histories, and peoples, then you'll love this! I'll post a few articles over the summer, so be on the lookout for that.

Third: A new poetry collection is on the way. More on that in a moment.

I'm Back

I want to apologize again to my readers for being gone for so long. I needed this hiatus for my own wellbeing, but I wish that I had gotten back into posting content a few months earlier than now. At any rate, I'm thrilled to be back and can't wait for the stories, poetry, and discussions to come.

One final word: I'll start releasing my new poetry collection a week from today (4/3/2020). Get ready for q u a r a n t i n e.

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