Hello there! Obviously, this whole blogging thing didn’t turn out to be something I could follow up on, last year. No surprises there! It sounded great in my head, and I had so many plans for posts beyond just book reviews and updates about my own writing journey…but none of these came to fruition. I failed to account for, well, you know. The world falling apart and my subsequent descent into the fog of “holy shit what day is it pt.2” or, “2020 – the second season”, as they say. I’m alright, things are mostly okay except the existential dread screeching at the back of my mind At All Times, but you know. That thing.
Anyway, it’s not like I spent the year doing nothing writerly, though. But I sure wasn’t doing all that marketing and networking I planned out to do in January, or at least not in an organized and well thought-out way. I wasn’t writing blog posts or short stories to share. I didn’t really follow up on newsletters. I wasn’t coming up with and creating crafty goodies for the release of Skylark. And I didn’t read or review a lot of books at all (I read like five books the whole year, it’s atrocious). This place all but stood still from last May right until this point.
I did, however, finish my first ever novella in May 2021. I did start and then even completed writing a fantasy idea that was sort of a stupid thought at first but then turned into something I loved writing and am now very attached to. I did acquire beta readers for it too, to prepare for editing. I did go through two rounds of editing for Skylark then sent it back to proofreading (and learned much during the process). I even applied for a permission to use some very special song lyrics in that book (y’all, copyrighting is a Mess, truly). I also read a lot of interesting and useful information about writing and publishing by following the ripples of #WritingCommunity on twitter to educate myself, and I got some truly awesome novels/snippets in front of my eyeballs as a fledgling beta reader, providing what I hoped was useful feedback.
So, yes. Things happened. The final form of Skylark in the Fog is almost in my hands (*screams into pillow*). Imbued, that fantasy idea I mentioned, is a full novel of 113k words now (I wrote another whole book?? what??) and I’m on to draft its sequel…soon…well, I feel like it’s better to let it rest a bit, but it’s going to be a duology at some point, and it’s going to be great (check out the new Books section on the site; I included some surprises and more are coming). Right now, I’m going through that novella, Inima Mea again, the spooky one (Phasmophobia the game X Supernatural but make it gender nonconforming and somewhat gay) to attempt to make it into a full novel. I think there’s potential there; I didn’t go into a lot of things in it that I could have, because I was afraid of crossing the upper limit of the word count, so now I can maybe do all of that. And I’m planning a Choose Your Own Adventure-style piece in the world of Skylark for a Discord server I’m on which might even become its own little oneshot at some point!
And why the sudden urge to post here again? Well, aside the fact that it’s “new year new me” time again, which will surely lose the steam from under its wings soon, last week, I made the decision to leave Wattpad behind. Yep, that happened. It’s a whole mess and a topic of another blog post soon (and that’s a promise). But due to this, right now I have a lot of sad and wistful (and wishful) energy that I might be able to channel into reviving the site. I’m even planning to do newsletters again (and that’s a threat).
In search of ways for how I can keep sharing my stuff without the constant danger of pirate sites stealing my words (yeah) I also set up a ko-fi page. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to use it yet, but it’s there. Maybe I’ll come up with some Exclusive Content. I don’t know whether any of you would be interested in that though. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll just stick my snippets into the newsletters. Again, a threat.
That’s it from me now. Look around, I rearranged the site a little bit, brought what I hope is more life onto the landing page…you can see my Twitter there now (where I sometimes ramble on about writing all day long) and if I share something cool then I’ll stick it into a list so it’s easier to find. There will be more adjustments and weirdness and changes as I figure out how to Present Stuff in the best way.
As you all know, I’m very good at advertising myself.
I also finished my first big cross-stitch project and started on diamond painting, maybe I’ll post something about them later!!
Well, see ya until the next time, keep on keeping on.
Love, Helyna
helynalclove.com 