I disappeared without letting anyone here know why. I'm sorry about that.

The last six months haven't been good for me. The argument could be made that they were some of the worst in my life. One of the milder things that happened was that I broke my ankle.

I'm not going to trauma dump on you, because frankly you don't deserve that. You're a decent person, and I would never want you to be bothered by my all too mundane problems.

Suffice it to say that I lost the will to write after some tragic and ill-timed events. This went on for months. I'd open the file for this story and just read and re-read it. I've done some editing of the earliest chapters, which I'm not going to post here. No matter how much time I set aside, how many "music to help you focus" playlists I put on or how much I stared at the screen, I couldn't make the words happen. I even came up with several ideas for other stories, which I wrote down and may act on in the future.

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So I hid it away. I pushed it out of my mind and tried to focus on work and family. I didn't know if I'd ever come back to this story, or even this website.

But I did.

I started feeling better and better about writing again. Ideas were coming to me, but they were ideas actually related to A Bad Regression.

I decided to try something.

For the first time in months, I opened up the file for this story. I put a mellow song I liked on repeat in the background.

And I typed out 1,500 words in a few hours. That's pretty good for me, the person who (even before the last six months) could really only handle about 300 words a day.

So here I am. To continue this story.

I'm sorry for the people who were reading this that I left in the lurch. I can't guarantee I won't flake again, but at least I'll try to let you know.

The next chapter will be posted a week from this post.

Thank you for being here.