Then, I realized that I've just been burned out lately.
But, this does come at something of a fortuitous coincidence. I'll be going to Florida next week to help my mother with her house, and I'll be there for a week. Hopefully that week off will give me some time to recharge and come back and knock this out. It won't be a vacation as much as I'll be helping her prepare to move (she's 66 and shouldn't be moving heavy furniture), but it's technically a vacation since I'm taking time off work and won't be home.

What I'm going to do is something I don't do very often. I'm going to find a cutoff point for the chapter i'm currently writing and either work up to that point or chop what's past that out and move it to the next chapter.
I'll be releasing what I have of chapter 20 I feel makes sense on Friday morning my time, just before I leave.
Hopefully a week of moving boxes and furniture will give me time to recharge the batteries and get me back in a writing mood.
I've also decided on what comes next after Shadow Walker. I'll be starting on Secession, which I suspect will run somewhere around 5-6 chapters and will tell the story of the next phase of the Consortium war and political machinations within the Confederation...which, as you might derive from the novella's title, will result in the division of one of the empires allied against the Consortium.