So I just uploaded two new fanarts on the fanart lineart page.  They were done by the very talented sozoteki on deviantart, and I’m very happy to share them here, too 🙂   One is an image of Ryomaru and Nezumi, the other is a sketch of Mikio, so please do check them out!

A lot of people have emailed of late to ask me where I’ve been.  I suppose that I just got sidetracked.  I’ll explain.  Back in February, my first “girl” died.  Abby wasn’t that old: only around 8 years or so, and she was my first dog.  Seriously, when my husband brought her home, I confess I wasn’t much of a dog person, but Abby just . . . well, there was something about her.  Anyway, when she got sick, we took her to the vet, but she was gone the next day.  I’ve been pretty heartbroken over this, and while I still have Bear and Teddy, I doubt that anything can fill the place in my heart that Abby did for so long.

So the day that the husband went in to bring her home so that we could bury her nearby, he also brought home four orphaned puppies, too.  We didn’t know if we could raise them, given that they were infants at the time (less than a day old, I think), but the alternative of having them put to sleep was bad, too.  After all, they were just too little to stand a chance, and the odds of successfully raising puppies that young by hand are not so good.  But we had to try, and I rather think that it’s been quite cathartic for me.

By some miracle that I’ll never truly understand, though, our girl, Bear (Abby’s daughter) took those puppies in and made them hers, and by even greater miracle, she began to lactate a few days after we brought the babies home.  I’ll never know exactly how it happened or why, but I know that maybe there really is a balance in the world.  To have lost those babies would have just killed me, especially after having just lost Abby, too.  So I suppose that it’s proof that life does go on.

So I’ve lately gotten back to writing.  I figured, though, that after this time, I’ll just finish Avouchment and post it together (it will take about a week to post the rest of the chapters at one chapter per day).  Then I want to get a few chapters of Purity 8 behind me before posting those because the opening of that story is extremely important.  In the meantime, though, there are chapters of Purity 9 posted (don’t worry; there won’t really be any spoilers to worry about regarding Purity 8, so it is safe to read both.).  It’s just that Purity 8 is going to be extremely hard to write for me.  The subject matter is far more intense, but hopefully it will come out right in the end, too . . .