Hello everyone, I’m back at the helm and ready to go. I suppose first I should explain why I up and vanished from the blog scene for as long as I did. There’s a few reasons behind the hiatus, some of them quite personal in nature. However, I feel by putting them here it’ll help reflect upon them.


First, Camp Nanowrimo, the inaugural June event for the National Novel Writing Month. The goal of the event is to write a 50,000+ word novel in the span of a month, no doubt a daunting task. I’d originally tried my hand at it back in November of last year, when I started writing the first draft of my Forgotten Realms based novel, “Tales from the Vast”. Though I had a decent start, I just completely ran out of creative steam early on. Also, with Thanksgiving and a unexpected trip south, it cut 30 days down to 20. So I ended up giving up on the attempt.

Since then, I had the chance to read over the story, and to be frank, I didn’t like what I had put to text. For the most part, I ended up gutting out the initial ideas for the story, and started working on it again. This time I wanted to really flesh out my characters, give them an actual purpose for wanting to seek out adventure. I also wanted to explore the dynamics between our heroes, and not just make them real dullards like they were during my first draft. So with a couple months to really flesh them out, I felt I had the key to restarting another attempt at the book. Just needed another Nanowrimo to come around in November.

Thankfully, the chance came sooner than I had hoped, when I caught wind of Camp Nanowrimo (thanks to Alby). Which leads us to our second challenge, having the time to do so. Too often I’d think that I’ve got so much work that needs done, and not enough time to do things. Between work and home life, writing a short novel is hard enough. Doing so though in the span of a single month? Yikes! Also add certain habits like WoW, FFXI/FFXIV, and League, ugh I wish there was more than 24 hours in the day somedays.

This time though, I was determined to make it finally happen. I’d work on it a little bit at a time; at work, on slow days at work, anywhere I could find some inspiration to write I did. I reworked and tweeked the original opening to the story, giving it a bit darker tone to it’s world. Also, for the 2nd attempt, I tried to focus the story around a few certain keywords, emotions such as hope, courage, love, and faith; stuff that I myself had to really espouge to in making this happen. And though I kept myself occupied with League of Legends between writings (something in hindsight I should have done without), I really tried to focus on the task at hand.

It wasn’t easy at times, god only knows nothing is easy in my life anymore. Especially when it came to the second point of my hiatus. This time of the year, roughly around father’s day to the 4th of July has over the last few years been a rather rough stretch ever since dad passed away near 4 years ago. Since then, I’ve oft been prone to bouts of bad depression, which in turn has affected me both emotionally and physically. There’s still days where, even at the thought of him, I’ll break down into tears. Was especially so after I had the chance to visit his memorial back home, despite how heartbreaking it is to me even after all these years. I always wanted to make him proud of my achievements, and, in a way, maybe through my writings I can finally live up to that expectation.

Who knows, maybe one day I can finaly make something good come out of it. God only knows I’m not getting any older, or this whole damned world is getting any saner. I guess though, long as I can bring a smile to least one person’s face with what I do in my life, I’m doing my good deed in life. Maybe one day I’ll be able to look back, and smile upon what I’ve done. Though it’s never been easy being me, in the long run it’s well worth the effort.

Happy fathers day, from a most grateful son. =)