Hide No Longer (Hide #3)

The winter holidays are ending, and so Lynne prepares for the return to her normal, day to day life, but can there be such a thing when ‘he’ still haunts her? Waking with his ethereal presence at her side, she wonders if he has simply become a normal part of her life. Yet even that may change. Left alone after a sordid morning of teasing, Lynne will inevitably be brought to face the question weighing on her heart.

Just who is she hiding from?

With her answer, this game may finally come to an end...

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That's right, I'm back at it again, and this time should be more consistent. I feel like I've heard and said that before but I wouldn't be surprised if I was the only one that remembered or cared too so let's not worry about it too much. A lot's been going on - for everyone at this point but I rather be an escape from talking about worldly news than play into blaming everything on it - and I'll just go ahead and say it from the start; this book was difficult.

It was difficult. With Kikimora Courtois I set up a future plans schedule and in my infinite wisdom stuck to it. Rather than change gears to something else, I stuck with thinking about this story despite its problems and essentially just emotionally crashed. I couldn't resolve the problems or deal with the anxiety of my own doubts and fears and just blanked out on writing. Combined with that feeling of being isolated and alone people might be more familiar with these days and some bad decision escapism, well things happened.

So what makes this different from every time I've tried and failed to get up? Well we'll just have to see, but for the most part I feel like I'm just "over" a lot of the things that act as convenient distractions and escapism from my anxiety and problems. A lot of things just didn't pan out, I'm just tired (but you're always tired...) and coming into 2022, I want to focus more on being a better, healthier and more productive person. Yeah like everyone in the first week of a new year because it sounds nice to say, I know, but it is what it is and I got to delete all my old writing progress logs that just made me feel worse and forget they ever existed so don't worry about it.

This is supposed to be talking about the book anyway. What made it difficult? A few things, one being it's the climax and closure to the story. Endings are always hard, always so hit or miss. I'm so often disappointed in an ending and can only hope this one isn't up there. It didn't disappoint me, hell I almost cried during editing. It's also pretty emotional, rather than just take my internal voice's "this is dumb, no one will believe or like it" etc., I tried to play it forward into Lynne's monologue of how ridiculous her situation was, and weave the fear into her own social anxiety largely born from her body image.

Of course, between his ethereal presence and one good friend, maybe Lynne will realise how her own image has been changing. That big is also beautiful to the right eye.