March Wrap-Up

So, March has been…a month. Some difficult personal stuff, though all in the last two weeks, so the second half of this month feels like it’s lasted forever…

Writing

Writing-wise, March has been very productive! Tithe is still with beta readers, so I took the time to send a few more queries for Evanesce and work on rewriting The Langford Conspiracy. I’ve finished Part One of the rewrite plan, and my intention is (was?) to draft Part One in April for Camp Nano. I’ve hit a roadblock again after Part One, because I have Big Decisions I need to make for the rest of the novel, namely certain characters who I’d decided to cut but since thought might have a place in the story…I‘ll figure it out. Of course, Langford being book 1 of a duology means that planning is pretty important, so I am feeling the pressure to pull this off well.

However.

On Monday of this week, I had an Idea. On every subsequent day, I have worked on this Idea. I have characters, setting, lore, and the overarching plot—all I need to do is map the story. This is unbelievably fast idea generation, even for me (it’s my biggest strength as a writer) and I’m feeling the lure of working on this for Camp Nano, while I’m in its thrall.

Which novel will I work on for Nano? Langford, or this new, shiny idea?

I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

Reading

As I suspected last month, my amazing reading streak in February was not to last. Since then, I have read two books: X-Files: Earth Children are Weird by Jason Rekulak and Kim Smith, which I intended to read to my nephew but decided it might be a bit scary for him (not art-wise, but the ending - no spoilers - might worry a very young and imaginative kid—although, the reference to Alien in it could be a bit freaky too!), and The Ones We Burn by Rebecca Mix. TOWB was, worldbuilding-wise, very good; it felt fresh and new, and the characters were very endearing. I just think it was perhaps a bit long, and some bits were very much dragged out, but it was definitely an enjoyable read.

While I didn’t read tons of books, I bought plenty, so hopefully when I’m back in more of a reading groove I’ll get round to my TBR, many of which I’m very excited for: Tag You’re Dead by Kathryn Foxfield, Monstersona by Chloe Spencer and the Farthing Wood Collection I-III by Colin Dann, which I bought on a nostalgia trip after watching the BBC’s Wild Isles and getting flashbacks to traumatic character deaths after watching the adders. Hooray!

The majority of my reading focus in March has been on the incredibly talented Hadiyah Sama’s Clawing for Dawn, which I beta-read and am now going over again, and honestly, what a treat. I need to get my editing hat back on and dive back into that, as I was a bit waylaid by the last two weeks of March…

Misc.—aka, THE SURGERY

It feels like the whole month of March has been consumed by the last two weeks and what happened in them—and it’s not something I particularly want to hash over, since it was one of the most stressful times of my life, BUT I do think that there are some parts of my experience which might be useful to other people in a similar situation.

So, my dog needed surgery.

The lump that Rufus had aspirated in February turned out to be cancerous, and needed removal. I booked him in for surgery and started administering him antihistamines (Piraton, to be precise, which are vet-approved and an absolute nightmare to get hold of) to keep the tumour as small as possible prior to removal.

Some time ago, I’d taken down the out of hours emergency numbers for my vets, which turned out to be a lifesaver—because, on the day, there were Complications.

Rufus went in for surgery. It took an hour for him to be sedated; he kept fighting it and waking up. Eventually he was out, and I went home. In what felt like no time at all I was being called back to collect him. They did warn me that it was a large wound, but nothing could have prepared me for it. It was raw, red and bloody, and the vet advised that Rufus had been shaking his head since he’d come round - something which Shar Pei do A Lot - and the wound was bleeding a little as a result. I was told to keep an eye on the bleeding and swelling. I wasn’t given a hood or a cone for him, but luckily I had a cone at home.

Well, the wound didn’t stop bleeding. What started as a few drops dislodged whenever he shook his head became a steady seepage until he was outright bleeding—and the wound looked like it was starting to open. Rufus was still kind of out of it thanks to the earlier sedation, so luckily he was fairly calm as I bundled him into the car and drove him to the emergency vet.

The emergency vets were amazing. They reopened the wound, found the bleed, stopped it and patched him back up - plus they cleaned him up where he’d been literally drenched in blood when I brought him in, and they kept him in until the morning so that he could be monitored.

I owe them a lot. The remedial surgery did, however, cost more than twice the initial surgery. So I ended up paying three times as much as I’d initially budgeted for.

Fortunately, I do keep an emergency fund solely for the dog, which has now been severely depleted but has served its purpose. Plus, he’s insured—I hate to think of what my premiums might look like next year but, for now, I’m hoping to recoup 2/3 of the costs.

Rufus is recovering well, and the biopsy results are back and, while the mass was cancerous, it was located beneath the skin, so I’ve been assured it won’t have spread. He doesn’t need additional surgery, or blood work, or anything beyond that. His stitches are coming out on Monday, and we can focus on getting back to normal.

So, my takeaways from this experience: be prepared. Don’t expect the vets to have everything you need, and have spares of everything: cones, snoods, anything like that. Have the vet’s emergency number, and be ready in case things go wrong: have a plan, have whatever funds that can be spared, and have any insurance details at the ready.

What happened wasn’t my vet’s fault. The anaesthetic lowered Rufus’ blood pressure, so when a blood vessel in his mucin layer was cut, it didn’t initially bleed. They’ve done surgery for him before and it went without a hitch; this was just one of those things. A terrifying thing that made me feel sick to my stomach, but it’s over now.

Rufus would very much like Cone Time to be over now too, please

Now, to end on a slightly brighter note (though my dog no longer having a tumour in his body is a happy ending!) — I did some baking this month! I made gluten-free lemon cupcakes for work, which I did not take a photo of, and Baileys martini cheesecakes for St. Patrick’s Day/Mother’s Day, which I did:

It’ll be interesting to see how much writing I get done in April…and what I end up writing.

Until next time!