No GenreCon for me this year

Well it's been a whirlwind of a 48 hours. 

It's unfortunate and a bit disappointing but some things are bigger in life.

So! The origin story to why I had to cancel my trip away starts with my youngest. Like I mentioned in my previous blog post, he has a rare genetic condition which I'll go into more detail on the 28th with the release of 'Henry's Hope' short story (keep an eye out for it). 

Anyway, for the past 8 years he's suffered with daily seizures as part of his condition. In that time we've tried about 17 medications to control them with little to no effect. Fast forward to August last year and he started having an increase in seizure frequency which resulted in multiple admissions to hospital with the next step looking at surgical options, of which there were 2 available.

Inserting a VNS (Vagus Nerve Stimulation) or the other being a corpus callosotomy (which involves separating the two hemispheres of the brain). We discussed the VNS with the surgical team this month and were told he would be on the Cat 2 waitlist (within 90 days). 

the pictures below will take you to more information about each procedure if your interested in learning more.

This brings us up to Monday when my wife got the call about him undergoing surgery the following week.

Between multiple phone calls we decided that we would take the booking. 

Lots of considerations went into the decision to cancel my trip to GenreCon but like every life decision it came down to support and money.

Explaining the money is the easy part, what is cost for my solo trip to GenreCon for accommodation and flights were better redirected to the surgery trip (I'd for once booked insurances and fully refundable accommodation which helped). No brainer.

We have to travel to Brisbane from Townsville for the surgery and I would have been arriving back to Townsville on Sunday night to fly out again on Monday morning, losing a whole 3 days before his surgery to get organised before we go and to leave it all to the wife to do wouldn't be fair either (she still wanted me to go).

Henry complicates a trip (hey! it's just what he does.) and again there's be more detail in my story that will be released in a couple of days but after he started to refuse to eat by mouth we had to switch up feeding him via a Mic-Key peg. We meal prep all his meals for a week which includes cooking and blending everything so it can go through his peg. Logistically even transporting 20 meals with us had us doing some mental arithmetic on how to package it all up (we have a plan).

So everything's been cancelled and rebooked now.

And while looking at social media and seeing the posts ramp up about GenreCon gives me a ping of disappointment I'll cope. I was looking forward to some cool sounding workshops and even putting some faces to names (and social DM interactions). I had a whole different blog in draft about each of the workshops I was going to attend and what my (humorous) expectations were for each one. I'd spent a couple of days pre-formulating some social media posts as well, all in the trash now.

Reflecting back on the last couple of weeks, what I've written has felt forced and I didn't think it was very good either. I thought using the deadline of GenreCon to complete my WIP for the pitch sessions would help motivate me but I think it had the opposite effect and my writing suffered.

With the weight of completing my primary WIP now off and after rebooked all the travel arrangements, something strange happened last night. I opened a different WIP and started writing again, and it felt good.

So that's it for the rest of the year, while I'll try and write consistently each day, the pressure is off and I go back to writing for fun and as a hobby. Last year I focused on some competitions and anthology submissions but not this year.

I'll still look to release the couple of WIP's I'm working on but I'll probably just do it independently. No stress about querying and just have some fun with it.

​Off now to give Henry's Hope one last look over before releasing it on Friday 28th for Rare Disease Day.