It’s been quite a while since I posted anything on this blog….considering my last post, it must have been since 2018! While making the rounds updating my internet presence, I realized I still had this. A lot of history here. So I’m keeping it and will post things more frequent from now on. Lots to say, so I’ll try and condense it: since Magenta Woes (my last post), Downwarden.com found a home with the Mobirise platform and remains with that site builder to this day, as well as Black Bed Sheet Books with WordPress. Many pets, including Smokey who I mentioned in an earlier post, passed away. My parents passed away. A lot of close friends passed away and I only have one relative left in my family that I grew up with out of many. I had a near death experience myself over the past holiday season, and after three weeks when I got home I had to have home care and therapists and couldn’t walk at first, and became a diabetic (type 2). Sepsis. My large intestine had burst. While I was recovering nicely, of all things that could happen, Francy succumbed to sepsis herself from a mouth infection, and the pain killers she kept taking waiting for dentists and doctors who couldn’t seem to help her created a stomach ulcer which spread her mouth infection to the rest of her body. The hospital couldn’t save her like they’d saved me, and she passed away in front of me as I was visiting her on the night of March 17th, Saint Patrick’s Day. And then our parakeet died, and then our bearded dragon.

Briefly let me backtrack: last year I decided to sell my parents’ house, the home of Black Bed Sheet Studios since 2015, because I wanted to get rid of all my debts and start fresh with a new home right down the street in the Foothill Farms area of Sacramento. Francy had picked out that house. It was a much better property. After we settled in, we enjoyed ourselves there, until…..

Something changed about me when I came home from the hospital. I had a surreal experience there and it took me almost two weeks to realize I was actually IN a hospital and that I hadn’t been indeed kidnapped and the hospital was taking over my home. I actually thought that. Francy really helped me when I came home, and there were many challenges that I overcame. After experiencing what happened to Francy afterwards, I could have driven myself insane. Instead, my attitude and convictions turned into basically the following thought process: I had better put more into my life while I still have one, because what if I’m next? Some people have explained to me that they would “live like they were dying,” travel the country, see friends, see things they always wanted to see. I found myself turning the whole thing inward. I became obsessed with the unfinished business over the years of my writing career, my musical aspirations and other creative endeavors, so I can leave more of a legacy behind and inspire and influence more people. I felt like I’d been bitten by something over the recent experiences, and I’d become my own superhero I suppose. In just a few months, at least from the beginning of March until now (June 26), I designed and released a journal (Diverse Arcanum), resurrected Marsena Shane (a pen name I used for romance and fitness books over thirty years ago) and redesigned & published those past books and wrote four new science fiction romance books in a new series called “Romantic Planets,” resurrected my old music and designed & published a song book with a CD in the works, and got three comic books of my works out there with more to come. And I’m making appearances again. And Black Bed Sheet Books is back in full swing.

Also, I’m about to release a new horror fiction collection, as yet untitled, a fifth Romantic Planets book, a fourth comic, and “The Downwardens,” a book I was never sure of plot-wise but that’s stuck with me for decades (my own website is downwarden.com), and it will be about my hospital experience. As I write this, I’ve been preparing for THE FRANCY EXPERIENCE, a celebration of life here at the house where I’m anticipating a good amount of guests, and I’ve turned most of the house into a Francy museum for guests to see. It looks like it may happen on a Saturday in August. Will post an update everywhere including this blog. And that’s the update for now, which was indeed a mouthful. Now we’re all caught up.