'Ello.

First off, to those of you following In Her Blood, an apology and a reassurance: For the apology, yes, there's a good chance that IHB will be going on hiatus for a little while. For the reassurance, I'm not losing interest in writing it (by any stretch of the imagination), and it should be back in just over a month.

To explain a bit further; right now, I'm in full-on Twilight mode. It's getting into the dreaded month before a bunch of pretty major exams (as British people in their late teens will probably be aware, May/June is A Level time) and during this time, it's pretty much impossible to do much beyond studying. These exams are pretty much going to dictate whether I get into the university I want or not, so naturally, they're a fairly big deal. Truth be told, I'd (much) rather be writing ponyfics, but I do tend to spend a lot of time on each chapter, and I can't really justify investing chunks of time of that size. The alternative is snatching ten-minute writing sessions of half a paragraph each, which naturally doesn't lead to much in the way of quality and makes the delay between chapters utterly ridiculous.

Many of you have probably noticed the horribly slowed-down update rate lately, and as you've probably gathered from my blog posts, the main reason for that slowness is because, right now, there aren't really enough hours in the day for me to do writing and exam revision. There's nothing I hate more than watching stories and blogs die out in a gradually thinning hail of "sorry for the delay guys" posts, and the last thing I want is for In Her Blood to become one of those, which is why I'm posting this to let you know exactly what's going on.

However, it's not all bad. Firstly, as I mentioned earlier, I'll be able to resume as soon as the exams are over. There are 2 in May and 2 in June, so I'll be able to resume after the May ones, because they're what's causing the majority of the workload right now. Secondly, I'm going to read over the story from the start again, probably make a few revisions and fixes, and clarify in my head regarding where I want it to go. I know its destination, but taking a break will give me a chance to plot a course there, so to speak, meaning that when I start writing it again, I'll have a much clearer idea of where it's headed. (In turn, that should mean faster updates.)

Thirdly, between now and May, there's a good chance I'll write a couple of one-shots. It's nice to take a break from big story arcs for one thing, and for another thing I can write them over longer periods of time without the nagging feeling that I'm leaving people hanging. I've had a few plans for a while, and now seems like a good time to try and get them written, because that way I'll have a more relaxing writing project that doesn't contribute to the general pressure.

So yeah; I'm not disappearing, and we'll probably be seeing one more chapter of IHB before I decide 100% on going from long-time-between-updates to an actual hiatus. Also, to the people who've messaged me and I've not gotten back to yet, this is basically why. I can only apologize; I've kind of been avoiding the site a bit lately because I feel pretty bad about the way the story's been tailing off due to all the aforementioned IRL nonsense. You've probably realized by now that when I have too much to do I stress out, start running around in small circles and get literally none of it done because this is how I logic. I will get back to you ASAP, and sorry once again.

Tl;dr: EXAMS ARE SILLY I AM SORRY HAVE AN ADORABLE TWILIGHT.