Losing the track of time

This is something that shouldn't have happened, but regularly every year, around this time, it happens. I have no time to take care of everything, and when finally I find a little fragment of time, I spend it idling, recharging my brain.

I allowed a couple of weeks to pass by without having written anything on my weekly blog. Not that I didn't have anything to write about; on the contrary, many things happened, and I could have written even four blogs. The point was just the need to recharge and find some time also for me.

Likewise, every year, my job, which didn't know any lockdown or pause during this pandemic, experiences the end of the year's typical overload. We all are double time busy, and we will stay so for the next four days, when finally, closing the computer on the 23rd, I will greet the office goodbye, for this year, and I will take three weeks holidays. 

Here is a sort of summary of what is going on. The first thing I wanted to write about was about an essential day in a Finn life, which is Independence day.

On 6.12, in Finland, we celebrate independence day. The history of Finnish independence started after the revolutions in Russia after the First World War. The hardships experienced by Russia in that period gave Finland the chance to withdraw from its rule. 

It was the 4th of December 1917, when the Senate of Finland, led by Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, who became the third president in 1931, undersigned the Independence act. On the 6th of December of the same year, the first celebration took place. There aren't special celebrations going on, in the city, besides the flagging and the decorations in the shops. This meant that people didn't suffer much for this year's restrictions due to the pandemic. Finnish population doesn't willingly gather in big numbers if not during concerts and the end of the years' celebrations.

As for me, we usually have dinner with friends because going out in this chilly, dark, rainy, snowless environment is the last thing I wanted to do. However, this time, we agreed to play safe and cancel the dinner. We didn't want to take any risk, and although we could have kept the distances, we understood that it would have felt so unnatural to spoil the festivity.

We will notice the difference for the end of the year's celebration, for which we have reserved to be at home with another couple of friends. Christmas celebrations also have been canceled, we will give each other a call on the 24th, and we will stay at home, enjoying the evening with the people from the same household.

This is not a real tragedy; a tragedy would be spending a fantastic evening all together just to realize after a few months that some of us won't live long enough to see what next year is going to bring. 

On a positive note, I have been extremely productive during this period and finished the first draft for the series's first book. I have started drafting the second book and writing down the plot idea for the third and fourth ones. 

I also rebranded my latest novel by hiring a cover artist to do the cover again, and I'm more than pleased to show here the results:

Paperback

Ebook

Also, I have decided that I will keep using the services of this cover artist to get rid of the headaches given by the creation of the cover art. I will focus my creativity on the writing and the promotional banners, but for the cover itself, I will rely on them.

I hope you'll have a great weekend!