First and foremost, I'm sorry this isn't a chapter. This is an explanation which I will leave up for a time so everyone has had a chance to read it and understand. I owe you all an apology and this is it,

Please, read on dear readers.

As you, my dear readers, are undoubtedly aware I have been gone for a quite a long while. Nearly over two years in fact. This is a difficult conversation to have with you but, we must have it regardless.

For sometime in my late teens and early twenties, I lived with my grandmother. My grandfather had died two years prior and she was not taking his loss well. No one in my family did. I didn't know what I wanted to do after high school and I wasn't ready for college yet, so I decided to live with my grandmother and work a small job for a time. My grandmother enjoyed not being alone in the house and I saved money for school.

I had spent a good majority of my free time growing up at my grandparents house and we were very close. However, in the last year I lived with her, my grandmother's health took a very sharp turn for the worse. She had become extremely forgetful and unable to spend any amount of time on her own, let alone be left to herself for an eight hour shift while I was at work. The final piece of this happened when I came home from work and the stove was on fire.

Needless to say, even with me there, it wasn't enough.

So, my aunt (my mother's oldest sister), took charge and moved my grandmother in with her and her husband. However, I wasn't allowed to stay in the house and had to move back to my parents' place where I found a small college to attend. Things went well for a time but my grandmother began to become worse and worse, until she no longer was herself anymore. Her health had declined to the point where my aunt had no choice but to put her in a home.

Less than 24 hours later, she had a fit of some kind. A minor stroke, an attack, we really don't know. But, that was that and my grandmother began the process of passing away. It took a little over three days and she was out of it for a great majority thank goodness. However, on the last day, she came out of it for a brief moment. Everyone was there that could be. All her children, their husbands, the grandkids, ect.

This . . . this is very difficult for me to say everyone. I still haven't really processed it and its been two years. Near the end, my grandmother had a moment where she was her old self and I was the only one she immediately recognized. Her eyes locked with mine and she smiled, said my name, and then she went under.

She never came out of it again.

Yet, her death was fast and she didn't suffer. That is a great blessing even of itself and not like my grandfather's which was a two year long battle with cancer and a broken shoulder which couldn't be fixed due to him dying. But, while I had steadily healed from my grandfather's passing, it is my grandmother's which is very difficult for me. I believe it always will be.

Growing up, I had always been writing. I had always had my head in a book and a pen and notepad next to my bed. My grandmother understood me; she was an English teacher, published two books, and won many awards for her poetry. She had hundreds of short stories and poems. When I would visit, I brought my work with me and we would go over it together. She encouraged me, pushed me, and was a brutal tyrant at times when it came to the subject. But, I loved every moment of it (mostly). I became better at my work because I had the best teacher in the entire world who believed in me, understood what I liked to write, how I liked to write, and was able to foster my talents in a way none of my actual school teachers ever could.

She was my mentor, you see.

Not only that, but while my dad is one of the most well-read man I have ever known and one of the reasons why I love fantasy so much, it was my grandmother who got me into The Lord of the Rings. My grandmother was born in the early 20's and she remembered The Great Depression. The Hobbit was published in time for her to read as a child and probably was one of her few options for escapism. She was obsessed with Tolkien. In her library, she had the second editions, autobiographies of Tolkien's life, books of Tolkien's own artwork, printed editions with screenshots from the films, Middle-earth A to Z encyclopedias, and so much more.

Tolkien was her passion and because of her influence, it became mine.

This is a rather long winded way of saying that my grandmother, writing in general, and my love for Tolkien are all wrapped up together. A tangled mess that's rather impossible to separate. So much so that I have this horrifying urge to "kill" everything I have ever created. I have come to despise every word I put to paper or screen. I vehemently feel this sense of loss and anger when writing.

I find the act physically painful. Even writing this to all of you, I feel like my heart is being ripped out of me by tenfold. My grandmother's fingerprints are all over every piece I ever made because she was there, pushing me to be better, to work harder, to go over it again and again and again.

She even helped me revise the first couple of chapters of this series. It had been my hope that she would read it when it was finished.

This story is so interwoven with my grandmother's memory . . . and I find it very hard to come back to it. Somehow, it feels like a betrayal. That I'm abandoning her by continuing a story that she had encouraged because of my passion and love for my favorite fantasy story of all time. Our favorite.

It's a battle with grief, I know. I have a feeling writing will never be the same for me again. It's like the loss of a Muse. The reason for everything is gone. It's not that I wrote solely because of her, of course I did it for me too. Yet, I always had her to come to when something wasn't clicking or when the words weren't coming or the paragraphs too long-winded. She could always nudge me in the right direction and I could go on and find my way.

I no longer have this.

My support network is gone and it feels . . . so very empty.

My parents have always supported me. They love that I write and read and have all this love for stories. However, they can't help me in the way my grandmother could because they aren't writers. My father, as wonderful as a man as he is, can only help me on a technical level and we all know that writing is more than just technicality.

There is something spiritual about writing. Something grander than just putting words to page in a coherent manner which is made up of more than just "good grammar" and "correct punctuation". There has to be a soul behind those words or else they are only that . . . words. Scribbles on a page which can mean nothing at all at the end of the day.

I feel horrible for letting this story collect dust. I had no idea really, how much this story had come to mean so much to so many people. This is humbling. So very humbling. I feel I owe all of you so much more than what I have given you. You deserve more. Every single reader and reviewer has been a blessing and a joy. All of you have believed in me and supported me and I feel as if I have let every single one of you down in the most horrible way.

Yet, grief is this experience which has no real guidelines. There is no set period. No limit on what feelings you may have in a certain moment or how long they last. They may be constant or come in waves. It simply is. For however long this lasts, this story is here.

I will come back to it. I do miss it. I miss writing. I miss the characters and Cate. I miss my drive and passion. I miss . . . being me. For writing is who I am and who I always will be. I write, therefore, I am. Me without it feels like I'm not me at all. My grief has become a shackle on not only my writing but myself as well.

Somehow, when I locked my writing away, I locked a core part of myself in there as well and I have misplaced the key.

My grandmother would be sad to see me this way. She always told me, "Never stop writing". I think she would feel even sadder to know her death has put me off a core part of what makes me who I am. I feel that way too to be honest.

Yet, I can't force it. I have tried and failed and hated writing even more than before by doing so. I can't force myself through this. For me, this isn't about being lazy or too busy with life or anything that simple. I lost the one person in my entire life who understood my very soul. My dad can't help me in the way I need it because he doesn't feel the words.

A writer, I feel is like the Horse Whisperer. There are people who can speak to certain things. To animals, to carpentry, to cars, to computers, to science, ect. I just so happen to speak in the art of crafting stories. Words are my blocks. I have the ability to see a story in my head and then use those blocks to build it. It's like architecture in that way.

I'm writing this now because I owe every single one of you an explanation for two years of silence. Two years of nothing. To years or failure and disappointment. I'm so sorry. I'm more sorry and angry with myself than you know because here I have so many wonderful people who believe in me and somehow its still not enough for me to pick up my work again.

I will find away back to this story. It may take more time, sadly. It may take me more than what I can handle. It will most likely take opening that ugly scar on my heart and forcing myself through the pain.

They do say the best art is created through suffering. Well, my dear readers, I feel like I have be suffering. I won't lie and say that I'm well when in actuality, I hurt so deeply when I write. I'm not lying to you when I say that these 1,955 words as of this point are the most I have written in two years time in one setting.

Somehow, I hope to find my way out of the dark tunnel I'm in.

If anyone has the Light of Eärendil, I would appreciate it very much if I could borrow it for a time.

Yours truly,

Lady of Myth and Legends