Sad News!

I'm afraid I have some truly sad news! Back in early December, book two of The Gemquist Chronicles met with a very unfortunate accident. At nearly 115,000 words, I'd been hoping that in just a few months I'd be writing to announce it's release, but instead I regret to inform you that that release won't be as soon as hoped for.

I was in the process of saving it after my last writing session, when my word processor completely froze up. Soon afterwards, the rest of my computer followed suit and, after multiple attempts with the notorious 'control alt delete' keyboard combo, nothing changed. Well, that's not quite accurate, one thing did change: my screen went completely black and the album I was listening to on Amazon Music started playing again in the background of nothingness (Steampunk Worlds by the way, if anyone is interested!). I tried again to bring up the task manager and try to restore order and function to my computer, but, in the end, I was forced to push the dreaded power button and pray I didn't just toss my poor Shelob into the fires of Mount Doom (yes, my laptop is named Shelob). Thankfully, she survived her ordeal, but, I'm afraid, that the same cannot be said for Miss Gemquist and the Black Queen. That file is now as corrupt as Saruman and I am taking a most unexpected journey back to the beginning of the book.

All manner of recovery methods have been tried, and I've taken it to be looked both by friends and family members that were experienced in file recovery and to two different PC repair clinics. No one has been able to recover even a fragment of file and Open Office, the word processor I use, did a full-program reboot when I first turned Shelob back on after the malfunction. So, instead of giving me its normal 'there's been an error and would you like to recover blah blah blah file that you didn't save,' it had me re-register the program as if it were its first install.

So, what does this all mean? Well, I'm not giving up, I'm much too stubborn for that, but the second installment of Loralai Gemquist's adventures will be a mite delayed as the only recovery to be had for it now is for the Lord to resurrect it in my mind and give me back the words. Thankfully, I know He has experience in resurrections and can take courage He will do just that.