The Bee Dungeon-Schedule Update

Hi all,

Posting this early to let you all know I’m exercising the option to extend the break. I will now take off the first week of November (11/3 – 11/7) as well. The tentative resume date is now November 10th, the latest possible resume date remains unchanged as November 17th.

Now for some extended reasoning for those of you that are curious. After taking a bit of time off, I stepped back enough to realize I was indeed starting to suffer some signs of burnout, so it seems this whole break was very well timed…or perhaps inevitable, whether I admitted to it or not. I suppose that even though I love writing in general and writing bees in particular that I may have been remiss in taking breaks. Thinking on it now, I’ve pretty much written continuously with the odd week off here or there since I started the writing on novelbuddy back in 2022…and now the Bee Dungeon is the longest-running series I’ve ever written that will continue to run for a currently indeterminable length of time. Throw in the publishing deal with Podium and the need to now also edit manuscripts, and then some personal and family circumstances with moves, a death and funeral, and several weddings…and, well, it's been a busy three years and I didn’t much adapt my writing schedule to match. I, um, suppose that the Writathon performance that kicked off my first series probably shouldn’t have remained my benchmark for a healthy schedule…

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So, yeah. In the interest of avoiding any burnout, I will take off as much time as necessary and make sure I give the bees my best. So, I’m going to take this week purely to rest from all the weddings and also just in general. Then, presuming I am well rested at that point, I will use the new third week off to sort out the writing and editing and make ready for my return. I will also keep the option open to take the fourth potential week off if need be.

The one-month hard return date will remain as my commitment because I don’t think being gone longer than that will be beneficial. I am, however, also rethinking the five-a-week schedule, at least for the remainder of the year and the holiday season, and may, as one of you suggested, pull back to a four-a-week schedule and aim to build up a backlog. Since the Bee Dungeon is in it for the long haul, probably best to give a bit more consideration to sustainability and all.

But, well, I’ll decide on all that once I start getting back into it. For now, let’s consider it the winter hibernation, so that many new bee chapters will burst forth from the hive once the rest is over! Except, you know, bees are supposed to prepare a winter stockpile before hibernating so they have something even while they hibernate...whoops.

A-Anyways, thank you all for the patience and kindness you’ve shown me! I hope you will survive the ongoing egregious lack of bees! Well, I suppose...we'll tune in come November to find out!