Scribbling on the Move

I'm in the middle of a move. Or, more specifically, we moved, but we still need to populate the place, because pretty much all I have is a couch and a couple of changes of clothes 😋 Nevertheless, I can't express the relief that coursed through my blood when I finally got here and decided, Nope, I don't care if I don't have all the furniture and all the stuff; I'm moving in now. 

(There are very few times in my life where I've put my foot down. This was one of them.)

This was, of course, in no small part due to the fact that the previous living arrangements were definitely No Bueno and played a huge role in my declining physical and mental health over the past year. Moving has been a balm. I can do a lot more than I could at my old place, even with my injured leg, and to be frank, I'm looking forward to learning to use my muscles again. Getting healthy. Getting well. 

God, what more could anyone want, really? 

When I moved in, the place had electricity, but all of the outlets had this 'safety plastic' that prevented anything from being plugged in. Theoretically, you just needed to push a little, and the plastic would break. In practice, you needed hulk-level strength. (Or maybe I'm just a weakling. That's a pretty strong possibility, too.) It wasn't until today, after many attempts, that I finally got to plug in my laptop, and now here I am! 

I haven't done much, given that I've been stressed out about my health, but I managed to write 6 pages for a story I've been running around my head for years now, in the Marie/Elise universe, currently titled Antoinette Goes Off Her Head. It follows a young woman who is being stalked by an obsessed fan she thought she was rid of. There's quite a bit of a psychological element to the story (as the title implies), so I think I'll really enjoy working with the sanity/insanity theme that will be running through it.  

The early cover for Marie/Elise.

 

I'm thinking that the entire main cast of Marie/Elise will get some kind of a cameo in the book, but there is one character who is going to be a main character in this story, too: Perry. It's a little like the Helena book - which I guess I haven't shared much about on here, either. The Helena book, which I am still trying to figure out a nice name for, features Helena as a main character, alongside Adrian, with other members of the main cast of Marie/Elise having small cameos throughout. The great thing about the Helena book is that it's a lot chiller in some ways; it includes a road trip, and a lot of relationship-building, with a little bit of a foiling-a-serial-killer to spice things up. 

Antionette, however, is a thriller-type story, with a little more tension and malaise. I once started writing this story a couple of years back, but I didn't really like where it was going or even how it started. I'm not sure if I want this to be a full novel or just a novella yet, but I'm proud of myself for getting it started again.

And that's all I've been up to lately. But it's so much more than I thought I would, and alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah!