Harley Q. Turner (Author)

Hockey season has officially started for my daughter. First game of the season was a 6-2 victory for the Jr Fury. I'm back to having my weekends filled with traveling throughout the states of Illinois and Wisconsin. Back to not getting home until almost 10 pm after practice 3 nights a week. While my daughter continues to enjoy her ice time, my oldest son (13) has discovered he enjoys sports as well. He played softball over the summer and is now in the middle of swim season. I never noticed during the countless summer days spent at the pool, but he really is an amazing swimmer! Of course being 6 foot 4 doesn't hurt. Thankfully the little kids are too young for sports yet, but 2 are in scouts. So my evenings are spent in a car, shuttling various children to play rehearsals, swim practices, cub scouts, girl scouts, hockey practices, swim meets and hockey games. I havent picked up a pen to write anything in months, but that's not unusually this time of year. On the occasion I...

I haven't been getting much writing done lately. With all five kids in school, I'm still getting used to the silence! I have been miserable for a long time, and I'm slowly starting to work on changing that. One of the things that has really been bothering me about myself is my weight. So I jumped into the Pokémon Go craze. Since I downloaded the game (July 27), I have lost 27 pounds! I walk over 5 miles daily. I'm eating healthier. I have a long way to go (another 50 pounds away from my goal), but it is a work in progress. As the year grows colder, I find myself spending more time on crafting than on writing. Between Halloween costumes that need to be made and getting ready for craft shows that the holiday season brings, most of my free time is spent buried underneath mounds of various yarn. Hockey season starts in a little over a week, so there goes even more of my time. I conplain about it, but honestly I think I'm starting to love the sport as much as my daugh...

Earlier today, I attempted to write a post to describe how I feel, but it ended up making basically no sense. Instead of making me feel better by getting the words out, I feel worse. It's like I don't even know who I am any more. I have spent so much time being the person everyone expects me to be that I lost myself. There are a very few people that I feel that I can actually be myself around, but none of those people are the people that I SHOULD be able to be myself around. I've been hiding in the world of dragons and faeries. Like me, several of the characters are also not sure who they are. Now obviously, I know I'm not going to spontaneously erupt wings from my back, but maybe, just maybe, I can be comfortable being myself again.

I've noticed quite a few things about myself since I decided to jump into the fantasy world of Avalon with my latest book series. Until then, I had always written about real life issues. When I felt numb, I wrote about cutting. When depressed, I wrote about suicide. Feeling fat; eating disorders. Until Saving Avalon, my books have always seemed to correspond with however I was currently feeling at the time. Maybe that's why I am struggling so much with book two. When I was writing the first book in Saving Avalon, I was struggling to find names for some of my characters, so I turned to my Facebook friends list. In an act of anger, I named a character after someone that was a fairly important part of my life, making this person a horrible character. Since reconciling with the person in real life, I decided maybe I should redeem that character in the book series. So that's what I decided to do with book two. The first seven chapters are spent attempting to redeem this ...

Yes that's exactly what they are: excuses. My computer is finally back up and running after a child managed to break my monitor. I'm on the mend from Lyme disease, although these headaches are murder. I don't wish them on anyone. The pain from a migraine isn't as bad as a Lyme disease headache, and the fact that I have had NO relief from it since it started over a week ago isn't helping my opinion on them. It seems like every time I get on here, I am coming up with some excuse as to why Saving Avalon is not out yet. The book is finished. It's edited. It's mostly formatted. Why am I not releasing it yet? I don't have an answer for that. This will be the first book published since I lost my grandma, but I don't think that's it. It's not the fact that I'm worried about what a turn to fantasy would do to my book sales either. I'm not entirely sure why I am stalling. I have so many things going on right now. I'm trying to be ...

As most of my readers should already know, I have taken a break from my usual writing to work on a fantasy series. Book One of Saving Avalon is finished and will be available within the next couple of weeks. I have a couple chapters written of book two, but there is where my dilemma lies. I keep finding myself thinking back to a certain character of one of my older books. I also said that I would eventually return to the Self Inflicted series, but I believe Rory and Liam's story is pretty much wrapped up. It's Gabe that I can't get off my mind. His story isn't finished. It has barely even started. Now since I am currently in the middle of Saving Avalon (and I have readers waiting for this story), I really can't abandon that project to return to Gabe's story, but I can't keep working on Saving Avalon when I have other stories filling my head. I'm at the point where I don't know what to do. I don't have much time to write anymore, and when I do...

I don't know how other people do it. How do other families manage to juggle schedules for seven people and not feel like pulling their hair out?!? I had a board meeting for my daughter's hockey team yesterday. All of the other mothers were talking about all the camps and other hockey related things their daughters are doing over the summer. I felt bad, because I told my daughter she would be taking the summer off of hockey this year. My son is playing softball and we need to focus on his sports for awhile. Now that I know she will be playing with an older team (13 and 14 year olds and she is only 11) next year, I regret that decision. What if she is further behind the other girls? What if she decides to give up? My son is loving softball. He never showed any interest in sports until I volunteered both of the older children as bat boys for the Beloit Snappers minor league baseball team. He loves it. My daughter hated it. With is being such a struggle with just the two chil...