An announcement on the release of The Restless King and Catching Shadows

Hello and welcome to the official blog of Danielle Berggren, author and artist.

First, for those who are not familiar with my writing and my work, this is your first official warning: this is an adult-oriented space. If you are under 18, or pure as the driven snow, then you may want to skedaddle out of this part of the internet.

Additional trigger warning: there will be inferences and discussions of some dark, difficult themes in this post as well as future posts.

I will include trigger warnings (TW) wherever possible. If one is needed and not placed, please feel free to alert me through the ‘Contact Me’ section or by posting a comment, I will respond to both.

Now that we have taken care of that bit of housekeeping, let’s start in on the topic at hand.

I must postpone The Restless King as well as Catching Shadows.

The Restless King will be coming out on December 1st, 2022.

Catching Shadows release date, TBD.

I dislike that my first post is one in which I must announce something is not happening, but unfortunately that is where we are for the moment.

The other day, writing in my journal, I wrote, “I must be able to create despite the burning wreckage of my expectations.”

That line summarizes what the last two and a half years have been like. I have been amazed that, despite the absolute chaos my life became, I was able to produce Catching Embers, as well as some pieces of fanfiction and short stories for my own collection.

While writing Catching Pathways, I was in what I perceived to be an incredibly supportive situation. Events unfolded in such a way, however, that I not only lost that perceived reality, I realized it was never there to begin with. The life I had been leading was a lie.

If you are familiar with my work, and Maeve’s upbringing that is referenced in Catching Pathways and Catching Embers, you know that she has had an incredibly difficult go of it. That did not come about by accident. There is the sense of, “Write what you know,” and those are the lives with which I am familiar. Not just my own, but those of my friends and family. I am surrounded by people who have experienced deep and extensive trauma.

I was attempting to build something with those friends and family where we could all continue to heal together.

But then the pandemic occurred.

None of us were prepared for it, and I put my trust in the wrong people, again.

Not only was the world seemingly coming apart at the seams, but my own personal life was disintegrating. I was losing every safety net I had ever possessed. I was in free fall for nearly a year.

My mental health took a massive tumble during this time, too. My diagnosis changed, and I struggled to understand my new ones.

This was not so simple a matter of happiness = productivity and stress = lack of.

I have lived in a near-perpetual state of stress, after all.

This was a matter of having no foundation beneath me. Nothing from which to launch a short story, nonetheless a full-length novel.

Things have begun to stabilize, and yet I feel how precarious my footing is. Which is why though I have announced that The Restless King will come out on December 1st, I will not promise a date for Catching Shadows.

Catching Shadows is going to be much longer than either of its predecessors, and what it covers is extensive and the basis for the Danuverse.

What is the Danuverse?

We will get to that soon, but not yet 😉

I hope that things stabilize soon and yet, friends, looking around the world it is difficult to keep the pessimism at bay. This world needs change. Something has to give. While I am experiencing extenuating circumstances, our systems of “caring” for one another need a massive overhaul, and I am incredibly lucky I did not slip even further into the cracks.

And that is a wrap for this first entry. I hope to see you all soon, and in the meantime, be careful out there. Be well.

Yours.