Wow. Where have the last few weeks gone? It’s been a very exciting, very crazy, very sad time.

For most of the last few weeks things have been going swimmingly well, so much so that I feel like each day I’ve been climbing clouds. Of course, I can’t talk about any of it openly, but there have been some great days, some touching emails, and just a general excitement in my spirit–which is a nice change. Could part of it be the fact that Spring has arrived? Possibly, but I doubt it.

See, Old Man Winter came back on Monday and hit South-Western Ontario with snow and ice and hail. But it didn’t get me down; I was still navigating the recent cloud cover I’d entered.

Work on FEVER has been going  well. I’ve finalized a synopsis and tweaked the manuscript and such. It’s done for now.

Which brings me to working on my YA project. VIOLET has been on the backburner since I went to Seattle a few weeks ago. Time for a swap. Now that FEVER is pretty much done, and I’m waiting to work on CYPHER and WINTERGLASS, I can bring VIOLET to the forefront and start dropping words on the draft again. I’m looking forward to seeing what misadventures she can get into as the draft progresses. And with so many people waving pom poms for me to work on it, how can I not?

But there have been some downers this week as well. My wife’s grandfather passed away on Monday night. It wasn’t unexpected as he’d taken a turn for the worse lately, but the reality of it all is not easy. His death also brings back a lot of the emotions and the sense of loss that I experienced when my grandma passed away a few months ago.  On top of that, another close person in the family fell ill on the Monday and was rushed to the hospital. He’s still there and not looking like he’ll be able to come home for some time.

So that’s where the treading clouds comes in.

I’ve been trying to stay positive and work through a lot of potentially exciting things while other things are collapsing around me. I thnk it’s possible; I just have to see what happens over the next few weeks.

Maybe I can stop treading and start climbing again.