Let me start by saying, I'm sorry I worried everyone. I really and truly mean that. I'm going through a lot of crap right now in the real world, but I promise it's been worth it, even if I'm more uncertain now about myself than I've ever been.

I can't promise that any of this will make any sense at all to anyone else; it sure as hell doesn't make any sense in my head right now. It's been a lot of jumbled, raw emotions.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to be out of pocket for awhile. I don't know how long exactly. I'm going with my parents to see the Grand Canyon, and since we're going to drive it, it's going to end one of three ways.

Wow, where the heck did my last two weeks go? Sorry everyone. I know quite a few are waiting anxiously for updates to Becoming Robin and Boys Don't Cry. I hit a bit of a creative slump lately. It's not that I don't know what I want to write; more like how to do the stories justice.

Back during writing near the end of Book Two there were times when I would write just to write. There were passable chapters with high points, but some of it just felt like it wasn't up to my usual quality, and I'm trying to avoid doing the same thing to both Book 3 and BDC.

Those of you following my main novels, Becoming Robin and Boys Don't Cry have probably noticed I haven't been very active lately. Part of that is that this is storm season, and since I usually do my writing in the evening, that's put a big halt to using the main PC. I finally got Windows 7 on my laptop though I still need to find my MS Office disc for that.

I'm fairly certain I've blogged extensively in the past about how music tends to affect my muse in strange ways, but I just had probably the best example ever of this phenomenon while working on Boys Don't Cry today (Don't worry, I'm still working on Robin too :-) She'll be back soon).

Just a quick note for Becoming Robin and/or Boys Don't Cry fans, I'm still writing, and I'm still okay. :-) There's a lot happening in my life, none of it I'm really at liberty to discuss right now because some of it is business-related, and the rest of it is very very personal, and I respect the other person involved's privacy too much to say anything in public like this. ;-)

What I CAN say is that if all goes well, in the next six months:

Alright, so I'm not going to just post a picture of myself for anyone who clicks on TopShelf to have access to, but is there anyone out there with experience in color flow charts that would mind taking a look and telling me if my assessment (Deep Winter, though I used to be more of an Autumn) is far off?

I'm not just talking about things like "Men hunt, women clean and have babies" here, either.

Growing up in the South, in a very small, backwater community, I was exposed to a lot of what look in retrospect, to be downright stupid social stigmas.

What got me thinking about this was reading a popular story on LGTales about a boy who starts practicing ballet. If I had had that open to me - i.e. if I had been born a girl here, or just plain born anywhere else, I would be in a lot better physical shape today.

I can distinctly remember a time not so very long ago, when I had myself utterly convinced that I was absolutely incapable of writing short, one-shot stories. I guess, in a way, I was incapable at the time, but not for lack of ability.

In retrospect, I think it was more a combination of facts. One of those was that I was just so laser-focused on writing my novel/serial. In the past, writing has been my therapy. I wrote for the exclusive purpose of writing what I needed to write, what I needed to get out of my system.

WARNING: This is going to be long, and perhaps a little nonsensical/cyclical. I'm pouring it all out into text to get it out of my system, but I promise it has a happy ending.

Depression sucks. I know that's stating an obvious fact, but I ended up giving myself a swift kick in the rear today, so I needed to write about it because that's why I started blogging in the first place, over two years ago. I want to be able to look back at this and laugh someday. Call me conceited, but I also want to stand as another reminder to others that no one suffers alone.

There are several ghost stories surrounding both Gettysburg battlefield and Gettysburg college. Most notably, the girls' sorority house, Stevens Hall, has some bone-chilling stories like The Blue Boy.

The story that grabbed my attention years ago though, and has stuck with me all this time, was about a female ghost that supposedly is completely taken with modern fashion.