Warning: Spoilers for the short story “Happy Little Family” ahead.

I was terribly reluctant to put up “Happy Little Family”. To call the subject matter touchy is a wild understatement. I know there are many people out there who use dark elements like rape and the varying degrees of sexual assault for nothing more than cheap exploitation. If the statistics I see have any truth to them, you don’t have to look far to find someone directly affected by this sort of abuse. While I don’t consider myself to be politically correct, I don’t make a point to offend just for the sake of offense. I also don’t want to needlessly inflict further pain on those who have already suffered.

I certainly don’t speak from first-hand experience on this subject. I’ll readily admit that I don’t truly know what it’s like. You might ask why I put Lydia through the experiences alluded to in “Happy Little Family”. Lydia has a lot of psychological damage, that much is readily apparent from the main series. When I thought on what would break a person so severely, I looked at her situation: a deceased mother, a father who is a Special Forces officer, a sister with her own military career, an entirely disconnected extended family. What would happen to this little girl during her father’s many deployments? He had little choice but to turn to the other families on post. Most of the time, it was fine, but not always. There are many disturbed people out there who only need the opportunity to become monsters. Naturally, if a man like Luka Han found out, the offenders would be a pile of hamburger and decorated officer or not, murder isn’t a rap you can beat, most generally. Even as a child, Lydia knew this much and that’s why she didn’t speak up. However, this isn’t something you should bury, no matter who the perpetrator is. I know that’s easier said than done, but no form of abuse should be borne in silence. Unfortunately, you can’t always count on the authorities to come through for you, but you have to try. Also, though I personally don’t have much positive regard for the psychiatric profession, I recognize that there are some therapists and other specialists who can help with coping and healing. I certainly don’t mean to portray Lydia’s approach as the correct one, though at least for a time she found the willpower to stop being needlessly self-destructive in lieu of facing her problems.

I doubt I’ve acquitted myself well to any critics who may emerge, but I did make use of a beta reader–a woman–to judge whether or not the story should be made public. I recognize it’s a minuscule sample population, but I did want a female’s perspective. No, I don’t intend to approach special populations as a supplicant seeking approval before I even blow my nose, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to get the perspective of someone who might be unduly affected by your work.

I wrote a fair bit of the dialog for Ionathas’ epilogue today, but that was about it. I got my first real taste of what I have to look forward to for the rest of the year and I don’t foresee a lot of time for writing, but I’ll see what I can do. Stay tuned.

I’ve been without an Internet connection for a while now, but I’m back now and I actually have a fair bit to report. I’ve gone on to finish Daphne’s Chapter 5 and Epilogue and have done a fair bit of work on chapters from Ionathas, Gamaliel, Xenomachos, and Corona as well as write up a short that bridges Daphne’s Chapter 4 and 5. I even spent a fair bit of time piddling around on my lexicon for the Elvish common tongue. I also went through The Three Warriors from stem to stern. It’s funny that I found the task so tedious when I tried it last month, but I just blazed through the whole thing in a single day. Didn’t add much, but I have streamlined the text and I’ll be uploading the new version soon. Honestly, I’m half-tempted to unplug myself deliberately from time to time just so I can get some solid work done.

Well, all this recent progress has been nice, but I’ve got stuff coming up that may not be giving me a whole lot of time to spare, but I’ll see what I can do in the days and weeks to come. If nothing else, I’ll need some means of escape from time to time and my writing is sure to be just the thing. Stay tuned.

Continuing to make progress on Daphne’s Chapter 5. My new laptop froze a couple days ago and I didn’t realize how much progress I’d lost, but I’ve recovered most of that ground and moved on ahead a little. I think I’ll continue to push through this chapter and maybe even go on through her epilogue before switching over to Tico3. Stay tuned.

More progress on Daphne’s Chapter 5. I may well have everything back on track in the coming weeks. That’d be nice. Things stand to get busy coming up, but hopefully I can still maintain a regular update schedule. Stay tuned.

For reasons that were entirely due to family bonding time over the holidays and not at all related to any Dragon Force playthroughs, I haven’t done any real writing for a good while, but in a single night’s push, I managed to get through Daphne’s Chapter 4 and went on to work on her Chapter 5 as well. From here, I’ll probably try to make further headway in Chapter 5 before switching gears to write on Tico3. I may publish that short story I was talking about next week to buy me a little more time. I would’ve published it sooner, but given the subject matter, there was no way I was putting it up around Christmas. Anyway, look for me to ring in the new year with a long-awaited story update and try to pick things back up again. Stay tuned.