Karmic Balance

Bleh, as some (probably most) people who read Until We Meet might have guessed, I'm not in a particularly good place at the moment, but I didn't explain why. Thanks to everyone who commented and reached out, you deserve some explanation, plus I believe in some measure of transparency and all that.

For the past couple years my partner and I have been going through the process of starting a family. That's a whole thing. But in August this year, my partner finally got pregnant and we were so excited. Every appointment, every blood test, every ultrasound looked positive... until a couple weeks ago. No fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound. Miscarriages suck. They're worse after years of treatments and work and pain and heartache.

We did everything we were supposed to do, but there was something we couldn't control. Our child had Turner Syndrome, where one of the chromosomes didn't transfer, leading to developmental issues. Few Turner pregnancies survive to term. Whether or not that's the specific cause of this miscarriage, we're not sure, but what we do know is that this hurt like hell. My partner and I needed a break from life stuff to process and recover. Our family and friends have been amazingly supportive and helpful as we mourn, but anyone who's gone through something like this knows everyone heals in their own time.

For me, I'm familiar with death. I've lost all of my grandparents, a parent, a stepparent, relatives both close and far, friends, and colleagues. And now a child that I never got to meet. Every death hurt in a different way, some leaving shallow wounds that healed quickly, some that healed but scarred, and others that are still healing years later. My partner hasn't lost people in the same way, and she's been struggling with it. I've been focusing much of my energy on supporting her, but it's meant having very little energy to support myself.

What's been helping is writing the occasional poem, like Until We Meet, a love letter from parents to a child they never got to meet. I'll be deleting that poem from Karmic Balance, but it won't be vanishing. I decided to launch a side thing with any poems I end up writing. It won't be monetized and you don't have to follow it if you don't want to, it'll mainly be for me. Like writing a letter you never send, except I'm making them public because the thought of my words just being available to the universe feels right.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Anyways, on to what this means for Karmic Balance. Karmic Balance at its core is a story about trauma and how hard it is to heal from. It didn't start out that way, but that's how the story's developed. I will continue to write Karmic Balance because this is a story I want to tell, but the mindset I need to keep writing it is not one I have the energy for right now. A lot of Jun's traumas are ones I've encountered, whether it was racism, sexism, bullying, violence, or abuse by authority figures. Other things in Jun's story are things I've helped friends deal with. So in many ways, Jun's story is a deeply personal one to me, partially veiled behind fantasy. But pulling upon those memories to write right now is a bit too much. I'm pretty resilient, but not that resilient. So until I heal enough to immerse myself in those memories again, I need a break from Karmic Balance. I'm not sure how long that will be. It could be as soon as next week, or it could be another month, or sometime next year. But I will return to Karmic Balance. I have plans for a full trilogy at a minimum, and ideas for far more arcs that I want to write and share. I promise to all of you that I will return to this story as soon as possible.

As to what else is coming, while I'm taking a break from Karmic Balance, I am not taking a break from writing. Besides the occasional poem I'll be sharing as I work through things, I've been pouring more of my energy into another project that I'll be launching in December. It's less focused on trauma, though that's still a part of the story, and more focused on action and superheroes.

The new story is called Fireflies.

Here's a blurb:

Fireflies are pretty to look at from a far, but up close they're just glowing bugs that draw attention to themselves, luring in predators and making themselves pests. They had a lot in common with superheroes, except that fireflies didn't cause immense property damage or threaten to destroy the world every other month. That was something Alyssa always believed.

Why else would someone who awakened powers don a flashy spandex suit, make up their own insignia, and run around fighting crime in the flashiest way possible?

If they truly wanted to change things for the better, they'd join the police or topple corrupt regimes for the people without wasting time on finding the perfect color coordinated super suit.

Supervillains weren't better or worse, just honest about what they wanted. In a lot of ways, Alyssa could respect their honesty, even as she hated their guts.

At least, Alyssa believed all of that right up until she awakened her own powers. Now what's she supposed to do?