Greetings! 

Being here in the cave, it's been hard to keep track of the time. But there has been a lot of bustle outside, so I took a peek and lo and behold! 2024 is due to dawn in jut a few hours! 

This year could be best summarized in a lot of little steps. I backed off a little on the platform building (which, in hindsight, might have been a mistake) and tried to focus a little more on my writing. 

Early on in the year, however, I had a huge life change - I got a full-time day job! I thought that with my evenings completely free, I would be able to devote a little more time to writing. But, early start times at work force early rising, and having only a half hour break really limits my ability to do much. Needless to say, smooshing 8 hours of "normal" duties into 4 or less proved to be a challenge. 

I decided to use what limited writing time I had on line-editing my debut novel, The White Rose. I could do it in chunks and I didn't have to put much effort into it. More on that in a moment, lol. 

For the majority of this year, I left off blog writing - except for hosting the Silmaril Awards, which I enjoyed immensely. Part of the reason for that is...I've kinda run out of things to talk about? I watch a lot more films and read a lot more books, but I don't really analyze nearly as much as I used to. 

In self-publishing news, the Fiat Self-Publishing Academy has been a good investment for me. While I haven't had much use for the majority of the resources at this time, I have had some great experiences with them so far. I met an amazing life coach who helped me with some writers blocks and had my Instagram critiqued by an Instagram coach. I'm also chatting with an editor about improving TWR's manuscript. 

Speaking of that, let's do a quick progress update!

The White Rose

This was Year 3 of implementing the edits that I received in 2020. This last year has been much rougher than the previous two. I started the year with 34, 726 and I ended the year with 68, 398 words. I am surprised that I managed to nearly double the word count considering that I barely got 10k last year. 

I finished the first 20 chapters in May of this year, and I sent it out to beta readers for critiques. 9 readers took the challenge, and they gave me such wonderful feedback. I can't wait to implement it fully. 

As I kept going through the draft, the more frustrated I got with the edit quality. I can tell that my editor was also frustrated with the plot. The straw that broke me was that the ending scenes were all suggested to be scrapped, which didn't go very well with either me or my fellow readers. I ended the work on the line edits late in the fall without the ending scenes. I took a hiatus from it after that, and will go back to it in January. 

I did commission a book cover for The White Rose, which was completed in September of this year. I'm super thrilled with the job that Benita did on it and I'm so excited to show you all the cover next year. Besides this, I have not made any more progress on self-publishing The White Rose at this time.  

Fair Winds

One of my stated goals for 2023 was to finish Draft 3 of Fair Winds. I must admit that once the clock to 2023....I forgot about this goal. I wrote not a word on it. It is a rather unfortunate turn of affairs. 

Supposing Erroneously

Due to my frustrations with my debut novel, I wanted to try and whet my muscles on a brand new story. The only one that fit into my schedule and my mood was Shattered Chandelier, so I decided to write a sequel for it back in December. I decided to base it off of the musical Singing in the Rain, as it seemed to fit the direction of the story. 

I experienced a minor setback when I discovered that all of my world-building notes for Shattered Chandelier had disappeared entirely. The good news is that with a contemporary story, there isn't *as* much work as a fantasy novel. 

Like Shattered Chandelier, Supposing Erroneously will be published on Wattpad. I have already published TWO parts for your reading pleasure (yes, I know, I probably should have announced it in it's own thing, but I.....completely forgot). You can read Supposing Erroneously HERE. 

Goals for 2024 

I must admit, setting goals right now is not very attractive to me. There has been little change in them from year to year, which has been very frustrating for me as well as for you dear readers.  

I still have the long-term goal of publishing either The White Rose or Fair Winds in the near future. But whether they will be completed in this year of grace 2024 or not remains to be seen. But I'm going to place these as goals and then reevaluate them in about six months: 

- Finish Supposing Erroneously

- edit another 20 chapters of TWR (maybe even finish them!)

- Blog at least once a month

And that wraps up 2023! I hope that you all have a very blessed New Years and I will see you in 2024! 

God bless, 

Catherine <3