An update on my hiatus

Hey everyone. First of all, I want to apologize. I've been away for far too long, and during this period, I've basically ignored all dms and comments reaching out.

I know I'm not some sort of famous writer by any means, but I also know that there are at least a handful of readers that are looking forward to the new chapters of Lizzie.

I acknowledge that I have no obligation to make such a post, and I think generally 'anonymous' authors on the internet wouldn't have bothered... But I am not looking for any pity or making any excuses. Perhaps it's my personality, but I value transparency, and it's important to me that you understand my situation.

I published the 5th Chapter to Lizzie today. And while I know it's not my best work. I don't want any of this to act as an excuse. Please do give me the criticism and / or praise that you think it objectively deserves. Those are what keep me writing.

Overall, I've been writing pretty slowly, although you all haven't observed it since you had no prior metric to compare to. In truth, early this year, me and my family found out that my father had a terrible, severely advanced form of cancer.

Of course, he underwent treatment and tried our best to support him in fighting the disease, but in the end, he passed away earlier last month.

I'm by no means a young child anymore. While I'm by no means old, I graduated from college and have been working full time for some time now. During the time, as he was forced into retirement, I was financially supporting the family. I am an adult, and I like to think of myself as mature for my age... But even so...

Every waking moment has been a struggle to deal with the reality of his death. I cannot even properly put into words how I feel. Where something so fundamental to me was ripped out and is now gone forever. I still hide in denial, busying myself with work, friends, games, and any other form of distraction I could find... But, every day, there's those moments where I remember... And those moments make me hurt all over again.

For the last while my heart has not been capable of writing. I tried at times but I felt so emotionally drained I couldn't bring out any form of creativity to the table.

A few days ago, I finally picked it up again. It hasn't been long enough for me to heal... I won't be healed for a very very long time... But at least I felt inspired enough to write. And I managed to edit and am now in the process of publishing the story. Given my emotional turmoil, it might not be my best writing, but at this point, I felt that I needed to publish it and move forward.

I'm sorry to everyone for the wait. I wished I was more transparent during this time, but I hope you can understand the circumstances and I hope this post explained my situation somewhat better.

As for moving forward, I'm not sure how much I'll write. I still have plenty of ideas, and plenty of things I want to write. I am still passionate and I want to finish not only this project, but several others as well.

However, it must be said that my mood is still unstable, and I've been feeling more tired than ever. I'm now the solely responsible for the financial wellbeing of my mom and two much younger siblings... Therefore I won't make any promises of when, but I promise that I will, so long as there's readers that continue to enjoy and look forward to the next chapter / story.

- Riven