Dev Blog 10/2/2026 (Patreon)

I'm alive!

Seriously, I'm not sure what the heck happened but my ear was infected to a scary point and it took me the hell out. More about that at the end of the blog for people who are easily squicked.

As for the Night Market. My goal this month is to finish editing chapter one and then post the revised intro and chapter one here on Patreon. I think I'll have added some stuff to chapter one but honestly, this one is solid. Its around chapter three that I remember losing the narrative a bit more so that's going to be interesting. Though, my drive is still there. I am looking forward to tweaking it and am hopeful to keep up with the momentum.

As for the shorts, I already have Bella's up. Gabriel's is next. I'm enjoying the last few ones I wrote because they feel far more like something you would see within the book itself. It's also giving different sides to the characters. What did I learn from that? Write what I want to write. Something you all have been yelling at me for a while. :)

Another thing I was thinking of implementing this month is an art competition. I was considering having you lovely artists out there, submit some art of the Night Market. I'll put them out for a vote (I'm not sure if it should be here or on Tumblr?) and then the winner would get free access to Patreon at the highest tier. I'm still working on the details but I kind of thought that would be a fun community thing to do. If it takes off we could do writing pieces also. Thoughts? Advice? Excitement?

Now on for the ick. Turn away now if you don't want to know.

So, everyone in my family had been sick with just a cold. It was not great but nothing we hadn't dealt with before. Now, if you know me, I have a weak immune system. I have since I was a kid. So, when someone in my family gets even slightly sick, I usually go down hard. This time around, I was doing good. I naively thought that the vitamins I had been taking was doing its trick. Wrong.

I ended up getting an ear infection. Did anyone else in the family have an ear infection? No. But somehow, I got one. And we aren't talking about a minor ear ache. It started out that way, sure, but by day two of it, my ear hurt so bad, I could barely even function. Any sound felt like an ice pick through my ear. I ended up going to urgent care and they prescribed me drops, but my ear turned out to be so swollen, they couldn't even get the instrument in there to look and see if my ear drum had burst.

Fast forward to the next day. The pain was still severe. Now, I've had two c-sections. Major surgery. After both of those, I was off painkillers within two days of my first and one of my second. I have a high thresh hold for pain. When I tell you that this ear thing hurt, I mean I was taking high levels of painkillers every three hours and it was still agonizing. I felt dizzy and nauseous. I felt like I couldn't even see properly. To top it all off, I was alone at my house with two small children. The evening of the third day, just as I was about to put my kids to bed, I don't know what happened. I just stopped in the middle of the living room and the pain was so bad I burst into tears. Which then prompted my kids to cry. Which then prompted me to call my mother still crying because my husbands work is terrible and wouldn't let him come home to take me to the E.R.

Again, the doctor could get no instrument into my ear to even look at my ear drum. They did give me a heavy duty shot of painkillers though and that only took the edge off enough to doze that night. The following day I was barely making it two and a half hours without needing something for the pain.

Then, on day five, I woke up to my ear wet. I took a cotton ball and holy hell. The amount of brown pus that came rushing out of my ear was the nastiest thing I had ever seen. And it would not stop. For the rest of the day, my ear would just occasionally drip pus. This doesn't gross me out but I made sure to show my teens because they would run screaming from the room.

I am happy to report that that ear is now on the mend and is no longer swollen. However, my other ear has started hurting. I'm putting drops in them now before it gets swollen. Fingers crossed it doesn't get bad. Seriously though, I never thought I would say an ear infection hurt more than a c-section.

Also, my mother told me a story about her getting an ear infection back in the sixties. Their solution when it was that swollen was to literally lance the ear. WTF?

Hope everyone is enjoying the start of spooky season!

Zinnia