Look, I already know what you’re going to say: “Where the hell have you been? You haven’t posted in, like, a year!”

You’re right. I haven’t. But I have an excuse. A bad one: I was busy.

Right after I wasn’t chosen for Pitch Wars last year, I threw myself into writing my first “fantasy” novel. Four months later, I came out of my cave with 150k words of what is, arguably, some of my worst work. Maybe not. It wasn’t all bad, but critique readers looking at it now all agree that it needs work.

So, while that was being torn apart this spring, I spent a lot of time trading work with other folks. It was a “new leaf”, so to speak. A change of pace from frenetically jumping into my next project to spending time on what I’ve already written, because there’s a ton that needs TLC.

While all that was happening, I submitted Aiko’s Dive to the 2022 Write Mentor Children’s Novel Award as kind of a last hurrah. I expected nothing to come of it, as usual. Instead, Aiko’s Dive made the long list!

Later in the spring, I submitted The Ones Inside (formerly Intelligence) to both Revpit and the 2022 Write Mentor Summer Mentorship program. I was rejected from Revpit, but…

I was chosen as a Write Mentor mentee.

Exactly what I did during the summer mentorship is an entirely different post, but as things are winding down, I thought it appropriate to do a blog post about it. Because it’s forward movement that I’ve been sorely needing. This last year of feverishly revising too many of my manuscripts at once (and this last book I wrote), have been a silent cry for help. I felt like my craft, and my chance at being a published author, were slipping through my fingers. Wrongly, of course, but I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I was trying to hang on to something that was always in my control to begin with. As usual, I was making my own trouble.

All that said, good things happened to me this year. Things that have made me feel better about my craft. About what I’m doing. About what I’m going to do. Now, I just have to go get it!

P.S. Expect more from me this year, moving forward. I’m not going to promise, because I’ll probably break it. But I’d very much like to make this a regular thing. Something I can grow. Something I can use to inform people who want to follow my journey more closely, because things are starting to crawl toward what feels like a measure of success. And also because I think there might a little bit of self publishing in the future. Stay tuned!