Hey, from your absent author friend.

Once again, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated you here, and I am both sorry for that, and not.

Life keeps on life-ing, and I have felt a lot like the burnt-out neurodivergent middle-aged author that I am, with all the chicks laid across a lifetime coming home to roost.

There are a lot of chicks. They are noisy. Not all of them are pretty. In fact, most of them are there pecking at my brain revealing the hard truths I would have liked to just ignore. Shredding the cloak of invisibility I normally adorn myself with so that I cannot help but see myself and the world around me in a truer way.

Which has meant I’ve been very quiet on basically all fronts while I process and heal and grow, and ultimately, evolve into the next version of myself.

I feel like we are always meant to be evolving, and sometimes that’s beautiful and sometimes it sucks. Most of the time it’s a mixture of both - which sums up life, right? Beautiful and harsh in turns.

To be honest, I started writing this post over a month ago, and not long after I started, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This was a real shock. It’s not prevalent in my family, and it was my very first mammogram. I had no symptoms. The lumps (yes, multiple) are mostly small, and this is a good thing, but next week I will be having a bilateral mastectomy and that’s not something I had on my bingo card for the year.

One of the weirdest things about it is that the professionals I am dealing with keep calling me young - young for breast cancer, but dang, I do NOT feel like I am young in any sense of the word lol.

I’m keeping my chin up and taking it all one step at a time, and I know that knowing what I am going through right now, you will forgive me if it’s a few more months until I post again.

In the background Iris and I are working on book three of the Kotahi Bay series (I can’t wait for you to meet Melody when she blows into the Bay), and I’m dreaming up some special editions for the Brimstone and Bookshelves in Auckland event next year, which I WILL be attending, despite the fact everything feels hard right now.

I must have things to look forward to, and I’ve asked several good friends in both my writing and reading communities to help me achieve these things. I’m going to need that support, and for the first time in my life, I’m welcoming it. Embracing all of the people around me and the love they are offering. Genuinely feeling it.

So, that’s nice!

Anyway, I’ll wrap things up here. Two days from now I’ll have been admitted to hospital for surgery.

I’ll see you on the other side.

Nova

xxx

PS - if you could have a special edition of one of my books, which one would it be? Foil? Sprayed edges? Interior art?