My blog has been empty for the past few years. I know not a lot of people have noticed that, since not many people knew about my website before I dropped off the face of the planet. But I know the people in my life have been wondering where I’ve disappeared to, and I think this blog is the best place to explain it all. I’d like to start using it as an actual normal blog and just post regular updates about what I’m up to.
The Website
I made a different variation of this post on my old website, which I have now decided to stop pursuing. My husband and I realized that “acshriver” sounds a lot better, and is easier to type, so it makes the best choice – and this means I now have the freedom to work on the site and use it regularly! This is the first time in my life that I honestly have felt ready to have my own website. And this blog is the perfect opportunity to answer the questions everyone seems to be asking my mom.
The Start: April, 2019
Three years ago, my book The Witches of the Cormorant was rejected from a publisher. I received the email while petsitting alone in the woods on San Juan Island, and I spent most of the night trying not to cry in front of the dogs. It just felt like a devastating blow.
I was already at a very low point in my life. But my mom had recently hired me as a petsitter, which I saw as a way to help improve things, and I was very proud of my book, which I had recently finished and which I saw as a hopeful sign for my future. It had taken the better part of two years to write. I had put my heart and soul into it. I was sure it would signify the turning point for me.
But at that moment, it signified a downward spiral – or at least that was how I perceived it at the time. It did make me realize I needed a huge change in my life, in just about every way possible… so I suppose it wasn’t a bad thing in the end.
In Every Way Possible
I moved to Friday Harbor full-time; before then, I had been commuting there to petsit and then going home to Bonney Lake. From then on, I threw myself into petsitting, and I settled into my life at home with mom, Greg, and the animals (and my brother Skylar, who was living with mom at the time). There were a lot of really nice things about this period of my life, but I also fell into the worst depression I’ve ever experienced, which overshadowed most of them.
I gave up on myself as a writer. I think I gave up on myself as a person, too. Sometimes I would take a stab at a short story, but it wouldn’t get longer than a couple pages before completely fizzling out. The inspiration was in there somewhere… I just couldn’t maintain it.
Life completely changed for me in the next few months. I became an island girl, and started figuring out how to define myself on my own terms. I bought many, many houseplants, and I became a confident petsitter with amazing clients. I made friends. I learned life lessons. But I had given up on a future, and sometimes it felt like I was just counting the hours in the day, waiting until it was time to go to sleep.
April, 2020
A year after the rejection, I was a full-time islander and a full-time petsitter… with full-time depression. COVID-19 had hit the world pretty hard, and – while, thankfully, our island community was relatively untouched by the first waves – it had made things difficult for everyone. Panic and depression had already become a part of the human condition.
In the midst of all this, I had begun to think there was no way I would ever write again. I’d started a sequel to The Witches of the Cormorant, but it quickly went stale, and I stopped thinking about it. I stopped planning stories, and I stopped thinking of myself as a person who wrote them.
Then, in April of 2020, I started playing RuneScape again – a ridiculous MMORPG I’d played as a kid. I was after nostalgia and comfort, and a few of my old friends had gotten back into it, so I went for Old School RuneScape instead of the new updated version, RS3. OSRS is… the exact old game from years ago, with the same graphics as back in 2007. Its familiarity was an instant comfort and I pretty quickly got back into it.
In May, I met Casper. We were both killing moss giants by the Fishing Guild, and got to talking. At the end of it, he invited me to the group chat he’d been in for years – and within a few days it was as if I had been part of the group forever too.
August, 2020
Cas and I talked regularly at first, but within a couple months it had become daily. He lived in Denmark, which put us on opposite schedules, but we made good use of the hours that overlapped. By July we had added each other on Discord, where we could talk properly… and by August, we were in an official long distance relationship.
That same August, I also started cleaning vacation rentals part-time, alongside the petsitting. Since I didn’t have a car or a driver’s license, the rental company was kind enough to give me cleans in town, or to arrange a carpool for me if they assigned me to a larger clean somewhere else on the island. Cas put himself on a sleep schedule that coincided better with mine, and I would text him all through the day. I ended up sending him tons of photos of cleans, and dogs, and myself reflected in various mirrors. In return he would send me selfies in his favorite hoodie, and pictures of the trees outside his apartment window, and of his mom’s cat Silas. We would videochat as often as possible, and we got to know each other very well over the next few months.
In November, my cleans dried up, and I didn’t have much petsitting work, so I applied for a job at a local gas station – the Little Store. They hired me by Thanksgiving; I started on the day shift, but quickly found that I was a night shift person.
This was an amazing thing for me!! I made LOTS of friends and somehow strengthened my relationships with the friends I already had. I discovered a whole new version of myself. In many ways, the Little Store helped me grow up and move on.
As we entered the new year, my life had completely changed, and my relationship with Casper had gotten serious. We’d fallen into a schedule of texting from the moment he woke up, and videochatting when I got home from work at night. As our relationship grew stronger, our separation grew more painful.
We made a plan to see each other in March. This was pretty quickly thwarted by COVID-19 and the travel restrictions it imposed between countries. In the midst of what seemed like a hopeless situation, we made a huge decision: when we were able to finally see each other, we were going to get married.
Schrodinger’s Catfish
A lot of people in my life thought this was AN INSANE THING TO DECIDE. The first suggestion was always “He’s only marrying you for a visa,” so I would have to say, “He’s already an American citizen, and I intend to move to Denmark.” Then there was always something like “But you don’t know him! He could be anyone! He could be married with five kids! He could be a catfish!”
I remember my mom rolling her eyes in this time period, getting exasperated and saying “What are they thinking? You guys videochat every day – Greg and I have even talked to him while you guys were on your calls! A catfish won’t videochat with you and your family!” But this didn’t stop the speculation.
As things with COVID started to calm down, we began to tentatively plan our wedding – scared the whole time that the numbers would spike again, and the borders would be closed back down. But things held strong, even as they threatened to go wrong again, and we kept up hope. Cas got a plane ticket for August 18th, and mom and I booked an AirBnb on the Olympic peninsula. And as the time drew closer and closer, everyone in my life seemed to wonder: would my fiance turn out to be a catfish?
August, 2021
On August 18th, mom and Greg and I drove through the little town to Friday Harbor’s airport, and a small yellow and white plane brought Casper to San Juan Island. He walked out the doors and into my arms, and he was NOT a catfish! He was my flesh and blood fiance. He was the real thing!
We were married on September 7th, 2021 – ten days before my 30th birthday. It was a beautiful and tiny ceremony in the AirBnb, on a lake in the mountains. There were six of us, total: Cas and I, mom and Greg, my brother Mark (the officiant), and our honorary brother Carlos (who took the photos). Then we went to Everett, where I felt blessed to see my whole family come together for our reception.
The next couple months were kind of a whirlwind. We went to California to try and secure an extended visa for me, only to get stuck in Sacramento due to a canceled Greyhound, which caused us to miss our appointment in San Francisco. We were unable to reschedule it, so we decided to just make a honeymoon of it, and extended the couple nights we’d booked in Humboldt County for vacation.
Honestly, we needed that trip. Humboldt is one of my favorite places in the whole world, and I was SO HAPPY to be able to show it to Casper. I knew I wouldn’t have much chance to share it with him once we got to Denmark and were settled in Europe. We took the opportunity, and for the rest of our lives we’ll be happy we did.
In December, we had stayed as long as we could stay in Washington. Cas is in university and had exams in January, so we were pressed to get back to Denmark. We had been trying to find a way to ship my belongings overseas, and had to scramble to get them into a storage unit instead. Island life can be really inconvenient when you’re trying to get things done! But, thanks to Mark, and thanks to modern conveniences like being able to book a storage unit and a uHaul on apps, we were able to pull it off.
We were also able to spend a few days with my grandparents in Everett before we left the country. I am BEYOND grateful we got to do this, as they got a chance to get to know Cas, and my grandpa Floyd has passed away since then. My grandparents were very involved in my upbringing, so it was super important to me that they get to know my husband as much as they could. I will always wish for more time, but I’m thankful for the time we were granted.
Home in Denmark
On December 11th, Casper and I stumbled off a plane in Copenhagen and claimed our million suitcases (filled with as much of my personal belongings as would fit inside them). His mom and his sister Marie had come to pick us up, and as soon as I saw them it was like I’d known them forever. Marie drove us all the way to Odense, to the little apartment where Cas had been sitting when he met me, where he had sat during all our videochats. We unpacked, and in that moment, the little apartment became my home too.
Things are still getting settled, even now. We still don’t have my stuff out of storage, and we’re currently in the process of trying to apply for family reunification so I can stay in the country with Casper.
In the meantime, I’ve been able to stay while an application is pending for an extension on my travel visa. We were told that it would most likely be denied, but it has taken them a long time to process the paperwork and I’m super thankful for that: it’s the reason I’ve been allowed to stay past my visa’s expiration.
So things are currently still very stressful. But it’s also become a time of great hope, and in so many ways, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Casper and his family have made me feel right at home. And I love Denmark! It’s amazing here. Cas has shown me some really beautiful places, and in spite of the stress, we’ve been enjoying the start of our life together.
Reconnecting With My Writing
Because of this, my inspiration as a writer was able to wake up again. I started a tentative new project before Cas and I left Washington, and it became a passionate work in progress as I grew comfortable in Denmark.
But The Witches of the Cormorant was still pulling at me. It was a completely finished book, and before its rejection I had been very proud of it. But for a matter of years, at that point, I had been unable to so much as look at it. One day I got curious and opened the document. I read a little bit of it, and the story came flooding back. And I realized it was not a bad book at all. It didn’t deserve for me to throw it away.
So I reconnected with it, and with myself as a writer. I even dusted off Little Boats, because I had never really been satisfied with the manuscript I’d created – I gave it a table of contents and a new cover, which made me feel a lot better about it.
I hit a snag when KDP turned out to have a page limit. But I turned this into a blessing by chopping The Witches of the Cormorant into two books, still using that title for the series itself. I’ve decided that for the time being I’m going to let myself focus on the current series I’m writing, but I have the entire plot planned for the third (and even a fourth) book in The Witches of the Cormorant. I can definitely foresee writing them in the future – even working on them when I need a break from the current work in progress.
So I’m glad to say, the book lives on. There are now links plastered to its volumes all over my Facebook pages and, of course, this website. I am happily pursuing a writing career again! And as I keep working on the latest book, I’ll also be working on organizing the photo galleries on this website. I’ve taken a lot of photos in the past couple years – I’m so excited to share them!!
So please follow my Facebook page for more updates. There will be a lot coming, and I plan to post about them all!