About me... I was born & raised in Las Vegas. I've done far too much schooling mostly in the hard sciences and psychology, but settled as an Ultrasound Technologist and am currently working in the Portland. Insofar as writing goes I'm pretty much self-taught, though I was also devouring Wheel of Time when I was eleven, so take that as you will. I've traveled a ridiculous amount (mostly internationally), and have a slew of hobbies both current and abandoned; I suppose, if nothing else, it makes for a good range of experience to draw from. Playing with kittens in Athens and getting lost for the sake of seeing what you manage to stumble across in France/Italy/Germany/Greece/Sweden/Japan/etc as a child/teenager has far more application to writing than you might imagine.

Recast Steel Series

Survival is complete now, and I am working on the sequel, Sedition, at any opportunity I get. Sedition is in its final stages now, and then we're onto the final story arc, Succession. I work full time and have an unfortunate slew of health issues to cope with, however, so it might not be as often as either you or I would like (for more details, consider the latest updates, listed below). More details of what's coming can be found in the author notes of individual chapters as I sort them out.

That said, I've been looking forward to the story developing into what it finally is for quite some time now, and I'm probably my most excited fangirl by far.

10/7/19:

Wow, the last profile update was both ancient and super broody; sorry about that. I'm going to leave it up for sake of personal reflection and scaled perspective or something for now, but... Yeah, moving on...

Chapter 21 is now up, and I have pages of notes and outlines for Ch. 22 Ignition Sequence that I'm pawing at every time I have even an inch of free time, so hopefully we'll keep on at a pretty good page. Most of the concepts I'm playing with now directly for this chapter were originally planned as 'oh, this'll be in Ch. 14" and uh... clearly, that didn't happen. The downside of a massive cast with an entire encyclopedia's worth of issues between them is space/time, or something. Also, the scale and politics of the entire situation got ahead of me for a while there, and real life, uh... well, shit got real, let's go with that.

You ever have one of those moments where you relax and realize it's the first time in two years that you've truly felt /good/? Not that it's been truly bad, but... sometimes weight builds up so slowly that you don't realize how heavy it's gotten until after it's been figured back out. Life stops just being getting through the week, hand to mouth, and you suddenly appreciate everything again.

So, hope everyone enjoys the massive this went through while it was on break, and you can find the details on their either in Ch 19 & 20 of Sedition or at the start of every individual chapter of Recast Steel, where any changes are listed. This is also now being cross-posted on Archive of Our Own, and it might even have a final chapter count soon. All my plotting is half as much for Succession as it is for Survival, at this point.

11/6/15:

Ch. 15 is about 1/4 written, and has been for a bit. However, I've been doing travel work, contracting to different jobs across the country and going alone (no husband, no support) to these facilities when I do this. I have a LOT of food allergies, and if I have no support network, I therefore have to cook everything I eat myself - this takes away most of my free time just on its own. Most facilities have a tendency to mistreat travel techs, due to the fact that they have to pay them more and have no reason to consider what we think of them in the long-term; travel workers are, frankly, expendable by their very nature. It's temp work, for healthcare. I have considerable health issues that my dietary restrictions don't completely resolve; I have joint damage, and I'm pretty sure I've actually torn a tendon in my knee. Therefore, when I do get free time, I'm usually either in so much pain I can't focus (because I can't take hardcore pain medications at work, for obvious reasons), or I'm on pain killers, which make it extremely hard to focus.

This is NOT to say that I've given up and am not going to finish; far from it. I'm just at a very hard point in my life, and I'm working on it. I think about my story all the time, and I'm hopeful that as soon as next week, I'll /actually/ start making progress on it. My current assignment is only 1 hr from home (traffic permitting...) so I'm finally home again, with my husband's support; he's handling food and otherwise being a fantastic house husband. This job is the first one I've ever had where they're NOT trying to run me ragged just because they can (8 hour shifts turning into 11 hour, working 5 days straight with a cumulative of 5 hours sleep in there from a series of nap caught when possible, 76 hour work weeks, etc.). The shift is actually even one that matches my natural circadian rhythm (nocturnal), and on some nights, might even leave spare time while I'm on shift to write. I'm back home, so I can actually /pursue/ medical treatment, instead of trying to communicate with my physician from another state.

I've been running on empty just to survive lately. I'm /just/ starting to come back into my own. I apologize for the delays, but real life IS kinda important, and this is a hobby. A hobby that I feel indescribably hollow if i can't DO - writing is one of the greatest experiences of my entire life - but food and sleep and paying the bills still takes priority.

Believe me, I'm really tired of living my damn life as a trial by fire of nothing ever settling out, constantly fighting for a little security and stability... But the fact that I've been through this kind of this crap is one of the things that's given me the life experience to write the way I do. Every single one of my characters are a facet of something I've been through or seen - the unfortunate thing is that trying to make my life work has been in the same state of psychotic limbo as Jake was putting himself through - since July. It's really hard to write the resolution of that panning out, as awesome as it is, when time and pain are the hounds snapping at your heels if you take a moment to try to breath, instead of continuing to struggle your way out of the mire. Seeing as that IS ending next week for the short term, and possibly improving even more as we're likely to move closer in February if this is permanent, I should be writing more than a paragraph here or there soon.

So, that's a life update, and I'll try not to disappoint. I'm always game to talk, but please, the accusations that I've quit on you all are rather asinine. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm physically incapable of dropping this story incomplete. Life has just been rather hardcore for the past 4 months, and it wasn't exactly all roses before either. I'm not a teenager who can pull an all-nighter and damn the consequences anymore. If I go to work wretchedly sleep deprived, it's not like with a class or a low end job, where a mistake only falls on your report - if I make a mistake, it hurts someone. So any of this, as much as I wish I could devote more time to it, MUST come after securing the sanctity of my patients.

The One-Shots

Honestly, I would take down some of these if it weren't an odd point of history and a painful sort of "I grew up!" pride. They were quickly written "Challenge" fics, and are terribly slapdash.

I have on the other hand, decided to simply take down one of them anyway. If you don't know which one, good. It was a writing experiment I completed for kicks and is utterly cringe-worthy.

I love to chit chat, just for fun or I can give writing advice if you want. I have this terribly bad habit of talking on messengers to distract myself from the big pile of work I ought to be doing. Life is all about distractions, honestly.

Mail: NikoJAM.rdms@

AIM: MuseNiko

Facebook: Niko Mackenzie

Philosophies of Life:
"Think every possible angle you can imagine on the situation, get everyone else's, then know that you've missed at least five others."

"Take what you get, live what you learn, and pray to whatever deity cares to grace you with faith that you don't fuck up too bad."