I'm smart now. Did you know that? I learned smart words (and what they mean) like "modifier" and "conjunction" and "direct object" and "indirect object" and "antecedent" and...see what I'm doing here? Yeah. I'm getting better at these grammatical thingies in English you're supposed to know, to write well. So. I finished (AHH! AHHH!!! AHHHHH!!!!!!!) the 2nd draft of IRKADURA, which you can download here, and, fuck, when I glanced at its 1st chapter (when formatting the PDF file), I cringed. Because I already know what to fix. Seems like last chapters will be miles away from the 1st one. Dunno why. Am I finally learning how to write properly or something? Anyway. Took me 11 weeks to do it, the beast. To those of you who pre-ordered, sorry! Looks like it won't be published until about September. 3rd draft shouldn't take me longer than 8 weeks, but who knows. Maybe I'll need a 4th draft. I want to get this as good as I can, all right? And, it's very VERY different from the 1st draft, like, A LOT. More bloody, more disturbing, with an alternate reality populated with all kinds of creatures, from tapeworms to cockroaches to boars to catfish beasts to mice to rats to horseflies to jackals to...oy. Many of them. You will see. The genre is different too, it's not women's fiction, it's more like magical realism. With a bit of cuckoo. Me, I've gone cuckoo. Writing it.

AND!

After IRKADURA is done, guess what, guess what.

You will hate me for this post. Go ahead. Start hating me now. Why read it? It won't be pleasant. I sweat in fear over writing this for the last several hours, thinking. I should write it. Then thinking, no, I shouldn't. I will get a lot of hate mail. Then thinking, well, I need to get used to hate mail, because the more vocal I become, the more haters I will gather. They're like popularity trophies. Then I thought, well, I'm stupid. Why should I say anything at all? Then I thought, no, I'm not stupid. What if what I think has value? What if I have something important to say? Why shouldn't I say it? Oh, it's the lack of confidence. It's been beaten into my head since I was little. I conveniently hid (hid? HIDE. I still hide.) behind this label of being an abuse victim. Hey, I can't openly talk about shit, because those bad assholes did bla-bla-bla to me... Awww, people would say, poor girl, we need to comfort her. Well, you know what, I need to ditch this and stop hiding. I'm doing it little by little, which is not an excuse, of course, but, hey, if I can't be ME, than how can you read what I write, how can you possibly be interested in anything I have to say if you don't even know who I am? Yeah. That got under my skin today. And I thought, well, fuck it. I will say what I think. And what I think is this.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE PREACHING OF DIVERSITY IN BOOKS.

HATE ME NOW.

I will wait. Are you done hating me? No. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Still here? Amazing. Well, let me backpedal a bit.

2nd draft of IRKADURA is done! And more cool announcements.

AND!

On diversity in books

I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE PREACHING OF DIVERSITY IN BOOKS.

HATE ME NOW.