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Accomplishments!

At last, I have an accomplishment! We had another long weekend, so I made my way to Serenity. The plumber had fixed the burst pipe (yay!) and the roads were clear of ice. The dogs and I went up with four things on my check list:1. Get the cabinet boxes painted and tape removed. 2. Do some story brainstorming. 3. Grade a few papers in the quiet of the mountains. 4. Take long walks in nature with the dogs.

I got it all done! Every one of them. Check, check, check, check. Yet somehow the cabin is still a wreck what with the cabinet drawers out waiting to be painted, tools covering the coffee table, primed cabinet doors leaning against stairs and walls, and I still haven’t found a mirror for the bathroom.

I suppose it is a good thing spring break is approaching?

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Could I Make It as a Dystopian Book Character?

Recently we had some bad weather move through. Lots of sleet. Inches of sleet. Yep, sleet and freezing rain are typical for my area of the country. We weren’t hit as hard as other places in the South, but we got a couple of inches of sleet. Thankfully no freezing rain. Freezing rain is the bane of a Southern winter. It’s sad that Southern kids have to sled on sleet, but hey, it works and it does get us “snow” days.  We had Monday and Tuesday off school due to the amount of ice on the roads.

This Saturday we were hit with a true snow event. We haven’t had a true snow event here since 2004. In case you are wondering, a true snow event is when we get an actual accumulation of snow and skip the winter mix of sleet/rain/snow all together. I don’t know what the official total was, but I had about six inches in my yard. I can hear all you Yankees laughing thinking six inches isn’t much. In the big picture you are correct, it isn’t. I’ve lived where we had bigger snowfalls, but here in the south six inches or more is a great snowfall. We will take it! And yes, it got us another two snow days!

As I sat in my sunroom watching the snow accumulate in my backyard, I started thinking how could I make use us this awesome weather and day off when I was struck with an idea. Since I like to write fantasy and dystopian, I should use this weather to test my mettle.

OK, not really, but I did get out the little flat pack rocket stove I bought a year or so ago and never tried. How would one of my characters fare in the cold and snow when trying to make a hot meal? The next morning, when it was 26 degrees outside (with a wind chill of 15) I ventured into my backyard. I hunted around the branches that had fallen out of the trees and were not sticking out of the snow in a search for dry sticks. I collected the dry sticks I found, cleared a spot in the snow and started my rocket stove. I’ll be honest, I used a little fire starter, good old cotton balls with petroleum jelly in them. With the amount of wind, I’m not sure I could have gotten the fire started any other way. I guess whatever character I’m writing will have to be a prepared character and have fire starters. Once I got the sticks burning, I put my pot of water on the stove, covered it and waited. The wind was blowing a hooey so I built a makeshift windscreen to keep the flames moving upward toward the pot and not sideways where they would only heat the stove walls.  

In thirteen minutes my water was starting to boil. Good thing too, I was running out of dry sticks. I suppose if my character was in a forest he or she would have more options. I, however, was limited to the resources in my small backyard. I poured the boiling water over the hot chocolate powder in my cup and mixed it up. On that beautiful sunny day, with the wind whipping at my back, I enjoyed my hot chocolate thinking of how I’d better step up my survival game if I’m going to make it as a dystopian book character in a world where civilization has collapsed. My fire making skills are lacking. What would happen if I had to grow food for survival? Build shelter? First aid?

How many lives does my character get??

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Echoes of Laughter After a Hard Freeze

January 18, 2026

With the long weekend fast approaching I made my plans. Get up early Saturday morning, make the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Serenity so I’d have the rest of the day to get a coat of paint on the cabinet boxes. The doors will have to wait for spring since I have a paint gun I’m using on them. The good news is all the doors are primed and ready to go.  After a coat of paint on the boxes I would relax as I leisurely write and maybe, just perhaps but no guarantee, work on lesson plans. I would have all day Sunday and most of Monday as well so no need to rush. It was going to be a relaxing and productive weekend.

The drive up became exciting as we (my dogs were going too) reached higher elevations and there was snow on the ground. I love snow and don’t get it where I live. There was also a chance of more snow in the forecast. It was going to be a perfect weekend until it wasn’t.

Truth be told, upon reaching the bottom of the road leading to Serenity I was a little sad to see the new drive to the top of the mountain. Before it was narrow, partly overgrown and tricky to navigate the ditches and holes as you made your way up the mountainside. I had to put my car in four-wheel drive to get there.  It made the place look deserted and undesirable to anyone thinking of taking the road. Now it is wide, cleared and freshly graveled. No four-wheel drive required. For me this takes away some of the appeal of the lonely mountain top cabin, but if I come up after dark it will certainly be easier to get there. Either way, once on top the view is still beautiful.

I let the dogs out and unloaded the car. I used Clorox wipes to wipe down all the countertops and anywhere in the cabinets I saw evidence of mice. Yes, we are still battling mice, but we are winning despite our infrequent visits. I put away the groceries and did what any self-respecting person would do on a cold morning in the mountains, I had a cup of hot chocolate. Then I waited for my brother to show up.

Once my brother came, we drove down the mountainside then hiked through the trees, following no path, to the bottom near the brook where we turned the spring pump on to get water to Serenity. It had been turned off a few weeks prior due to work on the driveway. I Had no idea where the spring was, hence my waiting for my brother who does. Once we checked that it was working and wasn’t damaged by the extremely low temperatures they had been having, we returned to Serenity. I went to the water shut off and turned the lever. Water sprayed everywhere as the pipe burst in multiple places.

It was then I heard echoes of laughter, you know, like the ones when I  made plans for last summer and God laughed. My plans were shut down as quickly as I shut off the water to Serenity. There was nothing left to do except pack up, drive home and accept that perhaps this was God’s way of telling me to go home and work on my own yard over the long weekend. My front and back yards definitely need work. Maybe it is a way for me to learn to write among the distractions of daily life at my own home so I will be better disciplined for writing during the busy and easily distracting school week. Blessings in disguise as my mother would say.

Blessing or challenge, I accept.

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Fighting My Way Back to Writing

January 14, 2026

I just passed another birthday. I won’t say what number it was, but let’s just say I’m no spring chick. I’m not even a mother hen at this point. The only reason I bring this up is because time, since I have hit this particular stage of my life, seems to pass at warp speed. But then, when you are trying to play makeup for the many things you feel you have missed out on, time always seems to be in demand and there is never enough. That, anyway, is the reason I am giving for not writing since April.

Last Spring I had big plans and high hopes. Yeah, what is that saying about making plans and listening to God laugh? I think I fell into that category. I really thought I could fix up Serenity over the course of a few weekends and then I’d spend my summer in the quiet solitude of the mountains writing. Hahahahaha. That didn’t happen.

It turns out, when you have to clean, sand, prime and paint walls in a cabin, where the wall space is tight, it is very time-consuming. It was a bit of an art getting paint in all the very small spaces between windows and doors and cabinets. It took a while, but I managed. Unfortunately, life happened as well and I didn’t get to stay up there as long as I wanted so the summer writing retreat didn’t bear fruit.

I’m a teacher. In August I was back at work and the summer was gone. This school year has beat me down and we aren’t even halfway through January yet. Among the chaos and the thrashing I’m taking while teaching, I have decided I will not work so hard and I will, nay, I must write. Writing is therapy. I may not be working on one of my book ideas, but I am writing and that counts for something.

Please forgive typos, bad grammar or punctuation errors. I am posting this without giving it a day to sit before I come back and edit it so this is raw and rough. No AI, all me. I want to post it so I feel like I have accomplished some writing today.

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Serenity

On a beautiful sunny Wednesday afternoon, when the sky was crystal blue and only a few cotton candy clouds drifted by, papers were signed. Papers were signed and the purchase was complete on a cabin perched near a mountaintop in the North Carolina mountains with a  road there that is narrow, steep and almost hidden.

On that beautiful day the proud new owners went up that road to the cabin to admire the beautiful views that are afforded to anyone who is lucky enough to find their way there. Inside was clean and tidy, though a bit old and outdated. The quietness that cloaked the mountaintop made a serene haven from a bustling world of business, traffic and work. The cabin was dubbed Serenity. Their only regret was they couldn’t stay for the weekend.

On Friday the remnants of Hurricane Helene arrived with a vengeance bringing rain, lots of rain, wind and tornadoes. Downed trees filled the mountainsides in the wake of the storm. It was a miracle no flood waters washed Serenity off the mountaintop, no tornadoes hit it and no trees fell directly on it. Instead a multitude of fallen trees blocked the narrow road up the mountain side so Serenity sat lonely and inaccessible.

That was in September. It would be March before the road was cleared. During a winter with more storms, cold weather and no one going to the cabin, mice moved in. They enjoyed their stay despite being messy, destructive, uninvited houseguests. With the road now cleared I went to help with the clean up in preparation for my June stay. 

Serenity is the perfect place to finish drafting my first novel. There is lots to be done before I begin my writing retreat. Top priority: put a fence in so I can take my dogs with me.

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Where It Begins

I’m Cian Craze and this is the journey of my quest from full time employee in a high stress, long hours, dead-end job to a full time writer. It all started with an idea for a fantasy book, an idea about a girl who gets pulled through a portal to another world. The idea morphed into a trilogy. The trilogy became a bit overwhelming for me as a first time book writer so I set it aside and decided to write a simpler story, a one off. While writing I decided to put this new story in the world I had already created. No point in letting all that work sit stagnant. Next thing I knew characters from the stories I had abandoned began showing up in the new story. Now I knew it was time to move away from the work world and leap into the world of magic, fantasy, dystopian futures, and science fiction. I made up my mind so now I needed to find a place to write and I have found the perfect place with the perfect name, Serenity.