Carol Moncado

Two full months after eye surgery… I”m ready for them to be back to normal. Honestly, at this point, I’m almost ready to go back to my glasses at my old script. At least that was predictable. If I didn’t have my glasses I couldn’t see. Period.

Now I’ve got this double vision thing. I’m still working on the TV set up in a corner of the living room for a monitor (though, I’m gonna be kinda bummed to give it up). I have a pressure check tomorrow and am hoping they’ll do a whole appointment to see what progress I’ve made if any.

I’m trying to remain optimistic… but it’s hard…

I am making serious progress on Jonathan’s story though so that’s good…

So…I’m procrastinating. I’m supposed to be writing a super fun summer thing that should release later this month. I’m loving it, but am stuck for the moment…so I’m blogging. I also did mock-ups for covers for the next four (yes, FOUR) novels as well as three novellas I hope to release this fall. I don’t have TITLES for all of them…but they have covers… :p

I also wanted to come back after my last blog. It seemed more melancholy and whiny than I meant for it to be. I can see so incredibly much better than I could before surgery, but it’s not was I was expecting yet. Yesterday, my eye doc did use the word “improvement” so, hopefully, we’re on the right track and we’ll continue to see improvement. I will still likely need to have a touch up done at least 90 days after the original surgery, but I haven’t been back to that doc, yet. The massive screen is helping – though it only helps so much when trying to do fine detail work for one of the covers…

And speaking of covers…I shared my newest one last night! The Lifeguard, the Abandoned Heiress, & Frozen Custard releases later this month in the Whispers of Love collection! I’m so excited to go back to the Serenity Landing Aquatic Center. Alivia is back, of course, but this story features Gwendolyn Cranston-Schmidt, who runs the front desk, and Adam, a lifeguard we met last year. It also leads into Jonathan’s story which will release later this summer.

Whispers of Love is only .99 for over 2000 pages of new books from 12 authors! You can’t beat that with a stick! The collection itself will only be sold for a limited time, so if you haven’t preordered yet, you totally should! The .99 price will go up not long after release, too, so grab it while it’s still a spectacular deal!

The pool opened this weekend so we were there both Saturday and Monday. Swim team started yesterday. It’s so good to be back in my happy place :). Yes, the purple pin is actually in my seat. Just ask anyone :D. I keep asking for a “reserved after 430” sign, but they haven’t gone quite that far yet ;).

And in a further effort to procrastinate, I think I’m going to do some more website updating ;). And will also pray I have a flash of inspiration for what comes next… 😀

So I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I’d had PRK surgery* in late April. Recovery had already been slower than I’d been led to believe and, well, it still is.

Unfortunately, it’s probably about as good as it’s going to get.

For now.

See, prior to surgery, my vision was somewhere in the 20/3000 range. As in super stinky. The laser had to do fairly extensive reconstruction (at least based on the size and thickness of a cornea ;)). Which means more recovery time.

But…even after a month of steroid drops (including two weeks of every two hours while awake), I’ve pretty much stopped getting better. The doc wanted to put me on name brand drops, but because it had only been just over a week since my last refill, insurance wouldn’t cover it. And it’s super duper expensive. So I had to go with the generic refill again until next week. Hopefully, he can write the script in such a way that I can get more than one of the tiny bottles, because that will still only last about 10-12 days tops.

We hope that it will help, but honestly, I’m not holding out a whole lot of hope. Most likely, I’ll need a touch up surgery. They won’t do that until at least 90 days afterward. There’s a date in late July that would work – but it’s EXACTLY three months so there’s a chance the doc will want to wait. The first date in August would work, EXCEPT I’m driving – by myself – to Nashville for the ACFW conference less than two weeks later, and I’d rather not cut it so close. After that, there’s a slim possibility we could get it to work in September, otherwise, it’ll be December. Sigh.

Have I mentioned how fantastic my husband and kids have been?! I don’t know what I’d do without them.

In the meantime…

I can see well enough to read a book or drive. But details any further out than a couple feet? Notsomuch. I don’t recognize people more than 5-6 feet away, unless I know them well and/or expect them to be somewhere. If I need to figure out which similar something I need to get at the store, I have to be embarrassingly close – and squint.

And I can’t see my computer screen with my normal set up. Even super huge font doesn’t work terribly well. So, i’m having to adjust to my new normal.

To that end, there is now a card table set up in my living room – right in front of the fireplace (thank goodness it’s summer!) with the 42″ television sitting on it and the laptop underneath and plugged in.

I CAN SEE!

But even then, the letters are somewhat blurry. :/

But the cover I just finished for the Montevaro Monarchy compilation looks super cool on a huge monitor. I’m now officially excited for the day when I can have a dedicated office and multiple huge monitors! 😀

So…I can work on my super special, super secret novella project that should be out by the end of next month – AND I can work on Jonathan’s story, which should be out near the end of July.

Which means it time to get back to work :).

*Different procedure than LASIK, similar end result

So I’ve been mostly offline for the last couple weeks. I’m sure most of you didn’t really notice, but I was ;). (That doesn’t explain my lack of blog updating but my lack of presence on social media anyway… ;))

I had this…vision of writing a particular blog post after all of this and, well, this isn’t it :p.

On Thursday, April 28, I fulfilled a dream I’d had for far longer than seeing myself as a published author.

I got my eyes fixed.

Or so they tell me ;).

I’m sure I’ll be very happy with the results, but it’s taking far longer than I thought to get there. I was led to believe it would be 4-5 days, but…here I am two weeks later :D.

It’s so significantly better than it was, and it’s not surprising it’s taking on the longer end, because I was pretty blind. I just didn’t plan to take 2+ weeks off :/.

That’s not to say it’s been all bad. Not at all. Some of the good stuff…

*A writer friend (she writes Medieval romance for the general market) works with me and doesn’t live too far. She drove me to work three times and took me to my eye appointment – we went to lunch at the NY Pizza place owned by the parents of a friend of my daughter’s. Our end of day schedule was quite different so…

*I spent a lovely 25-30 minute drive with my step-father-in-law. He drove me home from work the Tuesday after the procedure. We went a back way he’d never driven before and got stuck behind a tractor. He didn’t mind because he could rubberneck some.

*Thursday, a week after procedure, a couple other friends of mine picked me up from work. In his brand new Ford Mustang convertible. With not just seat warmers but seat COOLERS! Ginger, very kindly, let me ride up front so my eyes wouldn’t get even more dried out. Steve gunned it a couple times and yep – pressed back against the seat J. If you follow my Facebook page, you see pics of me writing in their rec room from time to time. They also took me to get my laptop from a friend who was fixing it. Love them!

*This Tuesday, my work friend and I had finals at the same time so she took me home and we went to the local BBQ place for lunch.

*My fantastic mother-in-law drove us around quite a bit. The kids had several concerts and other school things. She’s not used to something as big as my mini-van, but she did fine ;).

*By the next Friday, I was able to drive short distances without feeling like my eyes would get too tired. #1 kiddo and I went to the swim team meeting. Can’t wait for our pool time to start! They’re supposed to fill the pool this week which also means… cover photo shoot coming up!

So I’m still seeing blurry and double, but that should be clearing up soon I hope!

What’s happening on the writing front while I can only half see? I’m trying to finish edits on the second Lifeguard book. It will release late next month. Look for more details in a newsletter coming soon! As soon as that’s done, I’m working on a Fourth of July project I’m super excited about! There will be more coming from that group, too! YAY!

After that… well, then it’s time to buckle down and finish Jonathan’s story! You’ll see him and a little bit about what he’s been up to in the Lifeguard book, but his story is due to release in late July – another newsletter will go out when it’s up for preorder!

So that’s where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. I’d appreciate prayers for continued healing. A newer friend mentioned on Facebook the other day that she was a year out and it’s fantastic. She was worse than I was but it took her a couple months. So there’s a light at the end of this particular proverbial tunnel – and not just the super bright one the eye doc uses… 😉