Short answer? At work.

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But that's perhaps unsatisfying for most of you in reader-land, so let's try the long answer.

We had a substantial problem with people working overtime at my job, and we've had that, well, as long as I've been there. During December, for example, I was putting in 60+ hour weeks for a while, along with several of my coworkers, and my boss was putting in 100+ hour weeks himself. It wasn't unusual to see me or my coworkers working from home at 10 PM on a Saturday night to try to get ahead of our overly-ambitious schedule. Add on top of that the holidays, visits from traveling family, a wife, friends, and, oh yes, we moved to a bigger apartment then as well, and December was beyond overbooked.

I entered January tired, cranky, and exhausted, with no time left over for, well, anything. Most of my "spare" time in January was spent unpacking, and the rest was spent trying to catch up on the lost sleep of November and December. February consisted mostly of, well, more unpacking, and starting to remember that I did, in fact, have a life. This was aided in part by my company redoing its development schedule near the end of February so that I could actually work sane hours. (My wife says I still get home a little too late, but leaving at 6 PM easily beats leaving at 8 PM or 2 AM, so I'll take it. I even sometimes leave at 5 PM now like a normal person!)

And then the sinus infection from hell swept the office over the last three weeks. Everybody got it, all 120 employees, their spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, kids, you name it, and it was a nightmare that for at least a day or two made many of us wish for the sweet silent embrace of death.

So, well, I've gotten nothing done artistically in months. No drawing, no writing, no e-mails, no answering comments, no nuthin'. I still have unanswered comments here from October.

I'm now starting to catch up, but it's a slow process. Tonight I actually (egad!) did some drawing, and it's turning out pretty good, I think: My drawing skills haven't completely atrophied.

So, well, new stuff is coming. I'm coming back, slowly, but it'll take time.

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And, for what it's worth, thanks muchly for making Punctuation's Most Wanted a Daily Deviation and for all the commentary found therein. I read all of it as it happened, but Lord only knows when I'll have time to answer any of it.

I want to thank everyone who has just seen the Daily Deviation and come here to read Caity's World, whether you skim only a paragraph or you inhale the entire story in a sitting. Your interest and favorites and comments (and occasional drooling fanboy-ism) have truly helped make the last two years of work on Caity's World worthwhile.

I will endeavor to personally reply to each and every comment left on the story over the next several days, but you've all left so many that it may take me a while. Please be patient if it takes some time to get to yours — if I haven't replied, it's not because I haven't seen what you said!

Please offer a big thank-you to ^fllnthblnk for giving Caity's World a Daily Deviation; I liked the story, but I never really expected it to have mass appeal, and without his very welcome tip-of-the-hat, many of you would never have seen it.

Now, for those who haven't yet read Caity's World, it's a novel that I wrote and posted here on deviantART over the last two years. I posted the final chapter a week ago. If you wonder what all the fuss is about, here's what I would put on the inside cover were I to publish it in dead-tree form:

For five years, the world was a mess. A research accident — the Change — hadn't just bent the laws of nature but had broken them, and now monsters and magic were commonplace and all too real.

But Caitlyn Camberley's life was a mess for far longer, long before she woke up one morning as a centaur. She was an average nobody, stuck in a dead-end job, living in a tiny New York apartment. Single and lonely, her life had hit rock bottom when she met Wils, a quirky, smart, and charismatic man who seemed to like her — but how could she like him when she didn't even like herself? Especially when she and he were different species? And who was suddenly chasing her, and why? And what could anyone possibly want of a would-be artist working as a lowly gofer?

Follow Caitlyn as she goes from romance to conspiracy to unraveling the mystery of the Change itself — and discovers that there are far worse things than being an average nobody in a messy world.

And finally, here's some useful links!

• Here's a link to the first chapter.
  
• Here's a link to a complete collection of all thirty-five chapters.
  
• Here's a link to the Introduction and Author's Notes, a journal which tells a little more about the structure of the story and its intent, and offers links to each chapter.

That's right, folks, the long-awaited thrilling conclusion to Caity's World is going to be regularly posted in my gallery over the course of the next several weeks. Starting today, October 10, 2009, new chapters will appear every Saturday until the story's done!

I have the entire story on my computer as a second draft, and I will be proofreading and refining each chapter into final-draft form during the week before it gets posted: It's finally all in hard black-and-white, and just needs a little cleanup in places, so you can be assured that when I say they're going to be posted every Saturday, they really are.

If you haven't read Caity's World, now's your chance to start from the beginning, and if you're already a fan, you might want to get caught up.

So tell your friends! Caity's World is back!

Today is our one-year wedding anniversary! Huzzah! Songbird, I love you as much as the day I married you, and every day we've been together has been better than the day before it. So here's to three hundred sixty-five wonderful days past, and to many thousands more wonderful days yet to come!



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And on that note, my apologies to my watchers: I know I haven't been around here much lately, but, well, between job, family, friends, church stuff, and last but certainly not least my lovely wife, my time is pretty much fully-accounted for. More artwork and the thrilling conclusion to Caity's World are coming, but I won't be posting them until they're good and ready, which means you'll have to wait.

In particular, Caity's World is just this side of fully complete in rough-draft form, and once I get the first draft finished, I will start proofreading and then posting the chapters you have not yet seen on a fairly regular basis. I'm going to shoot for posting one new chapter a week, but please don't attack me if I'm unable to do so.

Anyway, more good stuff is coming here, but for now, I've a wedding anniversary to celebrate!