Lupus gives me a wild ride. I have good days and bad. I have bad weeks and good weeks. When it happens, it happens. Can't predict it, not usually. Just creeps up and kicks my ass out of the blue.
Being disabled and without a car, I end up spending most of my time at home. The pandemic killed my two days a week going out and about, but also gave me a chance to really focus on completing this trilogy that I'm writing. On good days, I can get quite a bit of work done.
With the first book out (although I'm going to do a revised edition that will essentially turn the first two chapters into a prologue) last October, I've recently started work on the final draft of the second book. It is no easy task. Some days I can't really work on it. Fatigue and pain destroy my focus and concentration. So, I have to work to get my symptoms under control so I can get back on the bicycle.
Having primarily written fiction all my life, this trilogy started as a major challenge. I essentially began writing it in 1998. At the time I didn't know how the story ended. I hadn't lived it yet. That's why it has taken until now to write it. This trilogy is the novelization of my life's journey, converted into an epic trilogy with special effects and all kinds of weird mystical shit going on. My life had rarely been mundane. Right now is the most mundane it has been since before my suicide in 1994.
In the second book, E2 is basically a character. I don't name this site. That is part of the overall way in which I'm writing the story. Unless there is an important reason, I keep things as generic as possible. I've done this to protect the identities of people from evil-minded strangers. A lot of the stories that make up the trilogy involve sensitive information. When I haven't gotten permission to share it publicly, I make it all but impossible to identify the specific person. Names are changed (there is only one person in the entire trilogy with a last name but it isn't really his), people's appearances are moved in the timeline, and where and how I met them may have details altered. Other than that, it is an entirely true story.
The second book covers June 2000 through June 2009, which includes the time in which E2 was a part of my everday life. It was here that I first shared publicly the story of my suicide and the adventures that followed, and that led me to connect with a lot of people from here who turned to me and opened up to me. Some wanted my help and insight. Others just wanted someone who would listen. And there are quite a few people from E2 who appear in the book, including an appearance by the late IWhoSawThe Face.
How did E2 fit into the scheme of the grand adventure of my life? Like all things in the trilogy, everything is coiled around everything else. Everything is connected. The adventure that I go on in the second book is intertwined with E2. I meet someone who becomes a key character in the story through the second and third books. There is that as well.
Anyway, writing a book a year in my condition isn't too bad. Maybe I needed to get sick so that I'd actually get serious about sitting down and writing this thing.