Down the Rabbit Hole

Happy Friday! What even happened this week...? I'm drawing a major blank on most of what happened at the beginning of this week haha. There was lots of classwork on Monday and Wednesday. Some stress was involved haha. There's been some figuring out class stuff for the Summer, even though Spring semester just started! But that's college for you I guess... Or more college for me, who's an over-planner and over-achiever and likes to have class stuff nailed down as soon as possible. Oh, yes, the dentist happened on Monday. Considerable stress and anxiety was also involved in that. Turns out, I may have an infection in one of my teeth, I have three cavities and a wisdom tooth that is starting to grow into the tooth next to it. So that was fun... There's been quite a bit of anxiety this week. I don't know if it's really been over anything in particular. I think it's just been an accumulation of stuff going on and stuff I've been thinking about...

Wow! The first month of the year is coming to a close already. This has been a pretty interesting month for me. I feel like January is a month of transition and figuring stuff out for a lot of people. It's the start of a new year and everyone's making new goals and implementing new schedules and plans. There have been lots of ups and downs, lots of introspection and figuring things out and lots of work that got done. January Writing: I did a lot of writing in Golden Touch this month! I love this book so much... It's probably the most "me" book I've ever written as Victoria Schwab would say. She was talking on her Instagram a few days ago about The Invincible Life of Addie Larue (her adult book coming out this year) and how this book has the most of her in it than any of her other books. And as I read Golden Touch I really feel that. This book has the most me, the most of myself in it than any of the other books I've written. It's both scary and ...

Woo another week is almost over! Last week felt kind of weird... Like there were some awesome parts, but then there were just a lot of stressful parts too. I feel like the first week of classes is always weird, trying to figure out a new schedule and what how these classes are laid out and everything. This week felt a little more stable on that front. I have a better understanding of how the classes are planned. The Harry Potter one has been hard to figure out cus it's very involved - more so than most of my other classes have been - and the teacher is a first time online professor so she's figuring out how online class works and everything. Plus, there wasn't a lot of homework to do this week, which I a grateful for. It was nice to have a more relaxed week with all that. One of the biggest things I did this week though: I finally started my read through of Cursed! That has been looming over my head all January. I kept putting it off, kept procrastinating and stres...

Happy Wednesday! If you haven't been around here in a little while, I'm doing a three part series on my writing journey and what I learned throughout each part of my journey. If you need to catch up check out Part One and Part Two . Part one is all about building a strong foundation for future years of writing and part two is all about self-publishing. One of the things I messed up when I published Weapon Icean was the thought that once I hit publish that's it. That's all I have to do. No other work involved. Well... that's completely not true. I think a lot of authors would agree that the real work starts after you publish your book. Now you have to market. You have to get people to buy your book. And social media can be a huge part of that. When I published Weapon Icean I was barely on Instagram. I didn't have a real following, I didn't have any following on this blog and I didn't have a Facebook page or Twitter account. I was pretty much a gh...

Happy Friday! I hope you all have had a great week! This week... has been good... There's been some ups and downs, but overall it's been a good week. Classes started this week. This semester I'm taking a Harry Potter class, an anthropology class on African cultures and a film studies class that starts in March. On Monday I got up and before I had even finished breakfast was calling several different offices at the college I go to to figure out why my anthropology class didn't show up yet on the modules. Then I had to email the teacher of the class and he told me it would be up in a few hours. So I felt like I had a late start to that class, especially since I was missing two of the books we needed to do a discussion board by the end of the week. On Tuesday I got to spend like five or six hours with my best friend which was fantastic. I had the best time hanging out and talking about a lot of different things. Plus, we went to Barnes and Nobles and I got Chosen ...

Happy Wednesday everyone! Last week I wrote a post about building a strong foundation with your writing. You gotta have a good foundation to build upon for years to come. If you haven't read that one yet check it out . This post is about everything I learned about self-publishing in 2019! After I published Project Hellion (I also published a fantasy short story collection and a children's book in 2017 and 2018), I think I went through my normal phase of feeling stuck and running through idea after idea never landing on one that quite fit. Until I came to Second Star on the Right, which I believe I wrote for Nanowrimo 2018. I was so in love with this book. It was a Peter Pan continuation. It had romance and talked about depression and finding hope and life again. I really poured all of my struggles with depression into Wendy and her story in that book. I thought... this is the one. This is the one that I want to get traditionally published. One of my goals has always been ...

Happy Friday everyone! I'm trying something new... This writer I follow, Caitlin who runs the blog And Possibly Dinosaurs does this thing every Sunday called Sunday Scratches where she sort of recaps the highlights of her week. I really liked that idea, so I thought I'd do something similar on here. This past week has felt like a week of waiting. Next week my classes start, I'm hanging out with a friend, my small group starts along with a babysitting job that will be on Fridays. The next Wednesday after next week my childcare job at my church starts again. I keep waiting for the anxiety to take over, to get overwhelmed with everything coming my way but... so far I've been surprisingly steady. By now, I would have freaked out about everything happening, but I'm just... not which I give all the praise to God for because there's no way in the world I could have this kind of steadiness and peace without His help. I finished draft 6 of Cursed this week and ...

Happy Wednesday everyone! So I'm loving all the features Instagram has for their stories. I used the question feature to ask for suggestions on blog posts I should write. I want a fresh list of new ideas going into the new year so I can start out strong and be consistent on here. One of the suggestions I got was my writing journey and what I've learned that I think others can learn from. Not only do I think its a fun idea, but also super appropriate since we've started a new decade and I'm still feeling pretty introspective and thinking a lot about the past ten years. I guess 2010 would be the right place to start. Honestly, I'm not sure if I was living in Arizona or Indiana at the time. Before 2010 we moved to Arizona and then around that time we moved to Indiana, then back to Arizona for about ten months and then back to Indiana because of my dad's job. Now we've happily been living in Indiana since. But also, I was like eleven at the time and even tho...

Happy New everyone!! Wow! 2019 is really over... 2020 is here. A new year... a new decade. I'm trying not to think about the whole new decade thing too much. It hurts my brain to think too far ahead like that haha I'm excited to see what God has in store for me this year. After last year, which was full of so many unexpected twists and turns when it came to my writing, I feel like anything is possible, like God can really do anything. I started 2019 with an entirely different plan than what actually happened and I really think that was God guiding me and showing me the way He wanted me to go instead of the way I wanted to go. And in the end, it's really paid off. In 2020 I want to continue to trust Him, even more so than I did in 2019. Give him my whole year, lay it out in front of Him and let Him take control because while I may have some plans, His are, and always will be, way better than mine. That's my plan for not just 2020 but for this entire next decade. I k...