From the outset of a new manuscript, I begin with a vision for what I want to achieve. Inevitably, as the draft gets longer, my ideas about what I’m doing shift.

Sometimes, it’s because:

• I’m building new skills to fully achieve my ambitions.
• My ideas about the story have irrevocably changed.
• My attempt failed.

That’s part of the journey and somewhat understood by people who don’t write.

Writers may not agree on much when it comes to the creative process, but we do seem to agree that writing a second book is always a different psychological experience than writing a first.

I think that’s partly because your idea about the kind of writer you’re going to be changes when your first book is out.

The moment you publish, you burn your dearly held dreams about who you might be in the fire of who you’re becoming. If you’re lucky and your book finds readers, that group’s feedback may also shift your perceptions (positively or negatively).

I’ve experienced a little of that. But after publishing Chaos Calling, I also experienced a deeper loss.

And that’s also something many writers navigate.

My recent chaotic loss: Richard Rudy

In August 2022, my family lost a stalwart, lifelong friend in Richard Rudy. Cancer claimed this wonderful person far too soon and with little warning.

Rick and I first met through the University of Waterloo’s Fencing Club. We shared an understanding of depression and mental health. He loved fantasy books (especially Dune, C. S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy and Wheel of Time), and was a staunch supporter of my creative work.

We stayed friends as we began our careers. He worked in graphic design and development, while I focused on communications and marketing.

Rick quietly orchestrated my first date with my husband (they’ve been friends since grade school). We later attended each other’s weddings and welcomed children into our families.

Over time, Rick and I collaborated on dozens of marketing projects. Working with him was fun and productive. We developed a short hand and an unbreakable trust. At his funeral, peers confirmed his talent for design and web development, and his willingness to pitch in during a crunch.

Most importantly, he was a devoted father, friend and husband.

A stalwart supporter

Rick took the black and white headshot of me that appears in my Tedx talk intro on YouTube. He built all my websites, including my first blog. I later lost it when payments on his servers failed before I could get into the back end and move the site.

His illness progressed so rapidly. By the time we realized how sick he was, making time for technical administration was out of the question.

In the final year of his life, Rick designed and built the first iteration of emwilliams.ca. His version was active from March 2022 to June 2023. He also delivered an eleventh-hour tweak to Chaos Calling‘s paperback cover, removing a smudge and somehow fixing a file error that had dogged the project without even knowing what he’d done.

If I had known how little time he had left, I don’t know if I could have asked for his help. But he was that kind of friend.

With hindsight, I also see how fearless he helped me be when pitching. With Rick in my corner, I knew he’d either work with me to solve my technical challenges or bail me out if I got overextended.

Beyond the milestones he lost with his family and friends, I deeply regret that Rick never read Chaos Calling. I can’t remember how much we discussed the story. Unlike many friends who volunteered to beta read, Rick wanted the polished version.

I trust that he’s at peace, and he knows how deeply we love and miss him.

Chaos Armor is dedicated to Rick’s memory.

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They were there when my grandparents and a school friend died in the 90s: open casket, Sunday best, a familiar face subtly altered by embalming fluid and makeup.

Disturbing and uncomfortable, yes. Particularly in the latter case.

Aaron was run over in front of his high school. An older student was playing a game of chicken with a classmate. He lost control of the car and killed Aaron as he sat on a nearby curb reading violin sheet music. It was a beautiful October day. He was in Grade 9.

I remember seeing the bruising on his face and hands that makeup couldn’t hide. The puffy, swollen cheeks that made him look unlike himself. The tiny, not-quite invisible stitches holding his eyelids closed.

I wanted to un-see those details. I still do, and can’t.

But that reckoning was necessary. Through such terrible details I came to understand and accept that he was dead.

Remembering my writing friend, Tim

The last three times I’ve been to a funeral or wake, I have seen no bodies.

Last week, I went to Tim’s wake. He died of brain cancer. He was 48. He’s the first of my adult friends to die.

We met through our writing group over eight years ago. Knowing he was losing his ability to select a perfect word, form beautiful sentences and finally to communicate at all was wrenching.

For a writer, how could it not be?

Brain cancer took all that from him along with his physical health. When I last saw him in May (I don’t think he wanted to be seen), he was thin and frail. His hair was gone, the new surgery scars vivid on his skull. His hands shook. The pauses between one word and the next were punctuated with effort rather than his usual thoughtfulness.

When I arrived at the funeral home with another writing friend, I dreaded seeing the final changes chemotherapy and more surgeries had brought upon him.

I needn’t have worried. Tim was gone.

Instead, there was a slideshow.

Tim’s slideshow: Facets of a life I never knew

Tim was a private person. I didn’t know very much about his family when he died. I don’t think I ever will.

I’m happy to know there was a time when he fell asleep with a baby on his chest. I liked the photos of him with his sisters and their children, and the photos of him as a child.

I had seen some of his more gruesome Halloween costumes before, and the photo of an office cube he once filled with popcorn. He loved practical jokes.

There were also some particularly moving photos of Tim with his new bride, who is now his widow.

But the Tim I knew, Tim the writer, wasn’t in those photos. How could he be? We rarely took photos when we met.

My friend and I left the funeral glad to have supported his family but still crushed by his loss. To be honest, without having seen his body, it’s hard in some ways to believe that he’s gone.

So I’m not bothered by the trend of people taking selfies at funerals. As Caitlin Doughty has eloquently observed, they’re a blip in a far larger cultural shift to digital mourning that includes everything from funeral homes to PowerPoint.

If photos are now a primary tool of grief, then take them.

Take photos of everything, everywhere.

Because the slideshow at the end of the universe awaits us all.

*

2026: I wrote this essay on Medium after Tim died in 2013. When he passed, I hadn’t yet been struck with the inspiration that would set me writing The Xenthian Cycle, though Tim gave feedback on the novel that rests like an abandoned city beneath its bones.

I named Anna’s and Malcolm’s son in Tim’s memory.

Their daughter, Erin, is named for my classmate.

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