Hello, and happy spring!

March is certainly coming in like a lion here. We’ve had wild swings between mid-80s and below-freezing temperatures, and it looks like we’re slated to get more next week. Since I teaching in an outdoor learning space, this is less than ideal.

In fiction news, I’ve written a new story about Rowena for my upcoming Kickstarter. You can find it and a number of other current and upcoming Kickstarters here.

The new story is set a couple of decades after the end of the series, and it’s about 

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

Rowena’s chase after the kidnappers of her daughter’s cat.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t too much of a spoiler? But yeah, Rowena does have a daughter after the main series is over, and this story is about how she and her college-age daughter team up to chase down a catnapper.

The story is a touch scifi, in that it’s set in the near future, but there are no flying cars or anything of that nature. What it does have are medical treatments based on things that are currently being developed. 

It’s informed by my own experiences with what is now being called PAIS (Post-Acute Infection Syndrome), an umbrella term that covers Long Covid, chronic Lyme, and infection-triggered ME/CFS, among other things. Having had it myself for over a decade now, I’ve been watching the Long Covid disaster unfolding with all the horror of someone witnessing a slow-motion collision between two freight trains. Carrying nuclear missiles. Whether it’s making accommodations for students who “just keep getting dizzy and fainting, I don’t know why–I spent a week in the hospital over break and they couldn’t find anything,” or talking to friends who are now too weak to wash their own hair, I feel like the grizzled old-timer in a horror story who escaped from the monster back in the day and is now trying to dissuade foolish tourists from going back into its lair.

That’s all very grim, but story itself is meant to be hopeful. I wanted to write something that would acknowledge what people with PAIS and their families are going with, instead of dismissing it as trivial and overblown they it tends to be in fiction (I see you, House and Cormoran Strike), but also gave readers (especially those with some skin in the game) a reason to feel uplifted and hopeful. There are also cute cats!

I’ll be sharing more about it in the upcoming weeks, but in the meantime, if you want first dibs on it, you can follow the prelaunch of my Kickstarter, as well as lots of other upcoming Kickstarters, here.

Happy reading!

Sid Stark