Is A. L. Buehrer Still Alive?

She left Instagram long ago, her email newsletter has dropped off, and her blog his been eerily quiet for months. Where is she? What happened? Is she actually gone this time?

I’m writing to answer those questions. If you’ve followed my blog, or have read certain posts from a while back, you know what happened to my social media presence. And, after all these months of hiatus, I can say now, more than ever, I’m never going back to social media. It’s…kind of a whitewashed sepulcher.

But anyway, I’m now going to vanish from the internet again, because I need to immerse myself fully in the task of rewriting Dronefall One.

The Dronefall Rewrite

If you didn’t get the memo, book one of the Dronefall series is being completely overhauled. I’m going to re-release it before I drop the final two books and finish the series. This has been a massive task already—brain-wracking, creativity-stretching, and sometimes discouraging. But this is what I do, and I want to give myself the space and quiet to do it. And hopefully enjoy it.

I want Dronefall to be a strong first book for the series. That fact that it was the weakest book by far had been bothering me for quite a while, crippling my confidence in the whole story. If people weren’t hooked by the end of book one, they probably wouldn’t read on. They would miss the best part.

At this point, I know for sure I can make Dronefall One a better book. A rewrite and relaunch could be a beautiful thing. It could light the fire to the fuse that could give me the energy to finish book six at last, knowing the whole series was locked and loaded. I’m working on chapter eight of seventeen right now. It’s going to happen.

But I need the breathing room. So, I’m going to vanish from Goodreads interactions (my last social media stronghold) and disappear into the wilderness of art and solitude until it’s done. Probably until the relaunch is quite imminent.

You’ll know when the eagles gather….

It’s Okay to be Alone

This is something almost no one in the writing community will admit, but there’s no right way to create. And that extends to whether you choose to work completely independently or not. Some need a whole community to motivate them to write and help them every step of the way. Others, like me, can be destroyed by too much input. No, it doesn’t necessarily take a village to raise a book. You can do it alone. I’ve found I like it much better that way.

So, bye for now. I’ll be back with a brand-new Dronefall.