May 2nd 2014 is a day I will never forget. After years of work and development Exile’s Return released to great fanfare. At that time I was incredibly optimistic for the future. In just a few short weeks I was to move to Washington, which would mark two of my biggest dreams being fulfilled in the same month.

Everything, I thought, was all downhill for me from there. I’d continue writing, get settled, and enjoy a long and productive career regularly releasing books.

Life, it seemed had other plans. Moving is always more stressful than you imagine it to be, no matter how much experience you have with it. Another way of putting it is, it’s always worse than you expect it to be. Needless to say the months drew on and I had still not yet started the sequel to my initial work. I had plans, I had hopes, but they remained vaporous.

Eventually, as it does once a year every year, November came round, and with it, Nanowrimo. The idea excited me, as did the challenge. Write a novel in a month, a caffeine fueled barn burner of a writing experience. The goal, 50k words in 31 days or less.

Challenge accepted.

Taking off like a shot, I wrote with great vigor, for the first time in almost a year. I had ideas, whiteboards, and my own office in my new apartment at that time. Everything I felt I needed to be a success, and in some ways, I was. I hit the 50k goal, right about the halfway point of the novel, and then hit Writers Block like I never have before or since.

That November, my early success at writing the sequel to Exile’s Return proved to be the last gasp before an interminably long winter that stretched just over three years. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I worked, I could not get any further in the story, and so I simply struggled with it, as Exile’s Return faded into obscurity.

That was not where the story was fated to close, however. Something sparked at the end of 2016, and, with shaky affectation I again took up the pen. What started as a trickle became a torrent of new ideas, and new universes. Something finally clicked, I found my stride, and I’ve been writing ever since.

It’s been a long winter, but spring is finally here. In the next few weeks, after many false starts, and lapsed promises, I will finally again be making anouncements about new releases, currently scheduled for January. The manuscript are written, and currently with a professional edit team. All that I’m waiting for is its return in mid october and a little final vetting between Kat and I.

There’s no better way to say it, then this: Studio Prey is back, and better than ever.

So to you, dear reader, the patient and long suffering, who has eagerly awaited new work, while the years have grown long since Exile, I thank you, in the best way I know how, with new content coming soon. I assure you, it will be worth the wait.

-Rebecca “Snowy” Mickley
Writer & Owner, Studio Prey