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I began 2024 hoping I would find my way back to writing and I now have TWO unfinished manuscripts. While I would prefer to have a complete first draft, I’m back on track and believe I’m heading in the right direction. And that direction is forward.
I’ve always loved to tell stories. From songs and short stories as a kid to novels later in life, words have always held an importance to me unlike most anything else. I revel in crafting an interesting tale, then watching for my audiences’ reaction. Even my day job is in marketing and communications and my top StrengthsFinder strength is Communication.
If you’ve spent any time in bookstagram, bookthreads, or any of the book-themed social spaces, you’ve probably seen a graphic featuring a book cover surrounded by short phrases and cutesy arrows pointing to the book. These graphics provide readers an at-a-glance summary of what themes they can expect in the book, and oftentimes these images include details that might be left out of the “official” book description, which makes them a valuable piece of a marketing plan.
You can finally reserve your copy of The Quiet Unraveling of Eve Ellaway! At the moment only the ebook is available for preorder, but the hardcover (that’s right) and paperback will soon be options as well.
You all blew my expectations out of the water when you helped me hit my initial $2,500 fundraising goal on the first day. THANK YOU. My audiobook stretch goal is another $2,000 and I’m over halfway there — but I’m not there yet.
Today’s the big day: the Kickstarter campaign for The Quiet Unraveling of Eve Ellaway (TQUEE) is live! This is my first time working with Kickstarter and I decided to try it because I want this launch to be leaps and bounds beyond what I’ve ever done before.
I’ve been working on this book for so many years that it feels a little unreal that it’s almost a real book! It’s been two years since I’ve published my last novel — my longest gap in almost a decade — so getting to reveal the cover is extra sweet!
The young adult psychological suspense manuscript I’ve talked about FOR YEARS — mostly on social media — is going to be a book! I first wrote The Other Me in 2018-19, polished it again in 2022, and it can be in your hands in February 2025.
Around my 48th birthday, I got the idea to compete in a triathlon before I turned 50. I talked to a couple friends who regularly compete in them, and we agreed we’d start training together. Then time slipped away, I lost my nerve, and I hoped they didn’t remember that conversation. Cut to the beginning of 2024, aka the beginning of the end of my first half of the century, I got the bug again. But this time the friend I talked to about competing was in my weekly ice skating class (oh yeah, I did that for six months!) so there was no escaping my declaration to attempt a triathlon before my 50th birthday.
Creativity often comes in bursts, and the more you cultivate it, the longer the burst lasts. After not writing for half of 2023, I created a month-long challenge for myself to get back into writing. Each day I wrote roughly 250 words. I tried genres I don’t typically write in, styles atypical to my own, all in the hope that I’d wake up that part of me who loves words.