Keely's Hurricane (9/24/2024)

and so we wait...

Here We Go Again…

I have lived in Florida since my parents dragged me over the state line in 1982. I was not happy about it — we had left the home I loved in Albuquerque, NM, to move to a home I had started to really love in Bangor, ME, over the period of two years. I was deeply against this third, sudden, and ill-advised move.

Hindsight is 20/20 but in that case I saw the writing on the wall very clearly: Florida was not going to be good to us. It wasn’t.

Which is part of a longer story, but the gist of it is: I’ve been through this rodeo before. I’ve been here for every hurricane that’s hit this state, whether I was in the “cone of uncertainty” or not.

Here I am again.

You see the “M” along the pink line of the Florida coast? That’s right about where Tallahassee is, and that’s where I happen to live:

Part of me ain’t worried. These things twist and turn, and one thing I’ve learned the hard way is to never trust predictions 100%. One of the reasons Charley hit us so hard in 2004 was that it was fully expected to run inland far north of us so we were totally unprepared. It zigged when it should have zagged and destroyed the home we lived in and everything inside of it. That was one of the most terrifying nights of my life, right up there with the Haunting of Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park (another story for another time!).

Wish us luck. I expect I’ll be fine, since I’m in a good location overall, but it might mean we’re without power for a while. Le sigh.

Weekly Roundup

Not much of a roundup, unfortunately. Last week was owned by me trying to adjust to the new job, which I’m not complaining about, but it certainly cramped my writing style!

Also, while I usually post “Keely’s Way” on Mondays, I got both my flu and COVID shots on Saturday and whew those knocked me out! Mostly exhaustion and brain fog—don’t really remember much of Saturday or Sunday, tbh! So it’s taken a while to turn the gears in the brain pan.

In lieu of new fascinating posts, how about some updates on things I don’t talk about too much because I’m bad at marketing?

• My fantasy-romance love-triad novel The Queen’s Aerie is a FREE read over at the Scriptorium! You can buy the book if you want, but I serialized the whole thing starting last year when I was just dipping my toe back into serialized fiction. (I don’t plan on moving it over to the Bibliotheca, so it’s just archived for everyone there on the Scriptorium for now!)

• Escape from Ice Mountain, episode 6 is up! “Not What They Expected” sees Astra and Zochur planning an adventure! It’s all Traz’s fault, because of course it is.

• Grieving Futures: Surviving the Deaths of My Parents is FREE at Patience & Fortitude! This book has been posted for free as a series of posts on my blog about mourning and grief as an adult orphan. A fun read? NO! An important one? I hope so.

• The Bastards of Yumeng continues with Chapter 20! This fanfiction is a WIP and is in the 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) / 魔道祖师-墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù fandom. The Bastards of Yunmeng is all about the three kids of the Yunmeng Jiang martial arts sect after they get thrown out into the streets as children. Its tropes include: found family, friends-to-lovers, canon-divergence, and sentient Burial Mounds!

THROWBACK!

Everyone is talking about serialized fiction around here lately, and it’s SO gratifying to see so many authors taking the plunge into serialization, no matter the format of their writing. Last year, I dove into talking about serials as a unique format while I was writing my book, Become an Unstoppable Storyteller. Read more:

Writing

Nope.

It’s a Keely-Boo World

Keely doesn’t mind storms too much, but when Michael came through in 2018 and then Idalia in 2023, she got very clingy. So, I know they do affect her on some level.

We’ll be fine, we’re on very elevated land and are right near the Tallahassee Police Headquarters, which means we get utilities back up more quickly than most anywhere else in town. The corner Circle K is pretty legendary for being the first and sometimes only source of hot coffee post-hurricane.

Here is an older photo of Keely, taken in 2020. I love the golden glow of the sunrise, and how it shows off her brown eyes:

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Thanks for reading Keely’s Way!

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