In case you haven’t seen my posts on my various social media platforms, I had a hysterectomy (everything but ovaries) almost two weeks ago. I’ve been taking my pain meds diligently and reading a book a day but getting seriously restless. This afternoon, I’m doing some slow walking on my treadmill desk, which in turn spawned some slow, slow writing on a short, short Kandy story that I was hoping to include in Moments of the Adept Universe 1 but didn’t quite make it.

Needless to say, my publishing schedule is now even more delayed than usual. As are my newsletters, etc. But I’ll get back to work on Amplifier 5 as soon as I’m up for it.

Here is a tiny Kandy snippet to tide you over (hopefully).

I stood on the land of the pack of my birth and felt nothing.

The gate had been open, but the long drive was filled with vehicles so I’d parked my Jeep on the street and walked. Walked until the behemoth of a house loomed over me. The white siding and columned front porch showed signs of age for the first time in my recollection. The dusty pink roses woven through the trellis that stretched up to Justin’s bedroom window on the top corner didn’t quite hide the broken cross brace midway up. And I could see that the untreated splintered wood had grayed with age.

Five years and five months of age to be exact.

I’d broken that trellis the last time I’d sneaked out of Justin’s bedroom. Though he’d asked me to spend the night, and nothing happened clandestinely in a house occupied by adult werewolves, no matter how stupidly large that house was, so sneaking around was just a game.

Just a game.

Fooling around with Justin and Dedra at the same time.

Pretending I wasn’t committed to anything or anyone, least of all some imposed sense of place, or status within the pack. The pack I’d been born into, bred into really. Bred to be the best of the best.

At the time I’d thought that walking away was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, ever have to do.

I’d been wrong.

And not for the last time.

Because it was possible — no matter that I was happy as I could be in Vancouver and within the loose structure of my pack of choice — I wasn’t going to be able to bring myself to walk through the front doors, let alone jog up the few steps leading to them.

My mother was dead.

– A Moment of Reflection (Moments of the Adept Universe 0.8), first draft