Hello & to everyone in the US, I hope you had a pleasant fall break.
I have been battling serious burnout due to things that aren’t my stories to tell. I haven’t posted anything new on Kofi for a bit, and I am sure my, uh, zero subscribers have been disappointed! Ha! Nonetheless, I am going to keep Kofi set up so that a single smackeroo (given just one time) gets you access to everything. That setting will stay in place until I can add content again regularly.
I had a snafu updating my website & lost some posts. Soooooo if you missed it, I had two stories published late last year (last year is 2022, for all you timelords & travelers). “How the Women became Lemon Trees and all your Daughters became Lemons” came out in the North Carolina ‘zine Corner Bar in October. “The Perfect Life” showed up in the Out of Darkness Anthology from Wolfsinger Publications in December.
I am still writing & drawing but haven’t shared much publicly. I’m only writing here today because Monday is usually my housekeeping day but we’re having a new heating & air system installed. It’s dusty work & housekeeping seems pointless. It’s noisy & expensive work too, so the burnout probably won’t ease up at least until the noisy bit is done. Wish me luck on that & if you don’t know about autistic burnout, well, that’s nice (also, keep reading).
In the meantime, if you are Christmas shopping, I would love for you to check out my shop on RedBubble. Or if you’re looking for books, maybe my middle-grade/young adult sci-fi fairytale -or the cute scene-story my eldest spun when he was merely 4 years old -is right for someone on your gift list. The books are both from the early days of self-publishing & the scene-story still looks like it, but honestly, I think that’s charming. Maybe you do too.
If you want to learn more about autistic burnout, you can start here. My symptoms are mostly physical & focus-related. I am safe. But I am very, very tired inside my brain. Nevertheless, I still like being an adult better than being a kid and being a mom better than not being a mom, even though some days I wish I could turn everything and everyone off for a bit.
I wish you the happiest of holidays, whatever you celebrate during this season of darkness.
db mcneill 