About that Unplanned (but Lengthy) Absence

Hey everyone, so sorry I've been quiet and unresponsive for the past few months. I did not mean to worry anyone. After I last checked in I continued to struggle with illness off and on until shortly after the Holiday season, but the primary reason for my long silence was that I got stuck. I just could not find a way to complete Ren Fest Girl Part 2, and it really demoralized me. I hit a wall of some combination of writer's block and exhaustion and a stream of negative reviews pouring in and the pressure of trying to produce more-and-more content all the time and it was just too much. But I never stopped working on the story, and I just kept. . . writing through the problem. Eventually, I realized that the story--the book--just needed to be bigger in order to contain all the content I needed it to, and there was no nice and simple way to chop it up into smaller bites that I could publish faster, so I just kept going, adding scenes where I needed them and just carrying on with the writing until I finally finished it (earlier this week). In the end, it wound up being a monster in length: almost 150,000 words, the longest story I have ever written. For comparison, Addicted to Womanhood Book One (which also took me about 3 months to complete) is only 115,000 words. A lot of all that content is flowery/fetishy (sexy-sexy) description of things that might not strictly require it and which it seems like the reviewers on Amazon hate, but it's the kind of stuff that you guys have repeatedly told me you like, so I'm sticking with that style for at least the time being. 

Again, I'm sorry I haven't kept in better touch during this lengthy writing process. At first, after I finally got over being sick, I didn't really know what was going on with the story and my writing and I was in a funk and I didn't really know what to say, so I just kept my head down and kept writing. I didn't want to come back without anything to show for my efforts. But I never expected the story to take this long to finish. It was originally planned to be 45,000 words, but when I realized the story needed an action adventure component, the length nearly doubled, and when I realized it needed to include a sex-scene, it almost doubled again. I kept thinking I'd be done at the end of December, but then I blew right through New Years' still trying to finish. At least now the story finally is done and everyone can (hopefully) see how much work I put into it. Rather than chop it up into smaller (50k words or so) 'parts' and publishing it separately for a bit of extra cash, I've kept it all collected together in one giant volume because I just don't think it really works any other way.

Again, I feel really bad for not having kept everyone updated better on my progress, and I am really sorry that I've been quiet for so long. I will try to avoid any lengthy silences like that in the future. It's not an excuse, but I was just really embarrassed about not being able to complete the story and not knowing why or what was wrong with me, and when I finally started being able to write productively again (sometime in December), I thought it would be better if I just finished the story first, so that I'd have something to offer everyone when I came back--I just didn't realize, then, how much longer the story was going to need to be before it was finished. 

I'm especially sorry to everyone who has been waiting on commissions from me for the past couple of months. I know I've made you wait much longer than we agreed, and I'm sorry. I will do my best to make it up to you--everyone will still get their story. I promise! I was never planning to quit writing, I just needed to figure out what was wrong with me. The first thing I will do now that I'm back is read and respond to the many messages I've received while I was away, then catch up on the past-due Patreon-exclusive stories that I was supposed to release, and then get right back to work on the next commission in my queue. 

In the future, I think, to avoid lengthy periods of burn-out and writer's block I'm going to have to slow down and take more breaks, at more regular intervals (no more working both Saturday and Sunday every weekend, for a start.) Maybe even a vacation every once in a while (as soon as I finish the backlog of commissions!) And I'll try to do better at recognizing when I'm hitting a wall so that I can let you guys know that it may be a couple of months before I put out another story, so that you don't have to worry. 

For everyone who stuck with me the last couple of months--thank you. I appreciate it. 

And now, to start digging into all the messages I received while I was 'away.'

- Zoe