Five Years

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post. Why? That funny little thing called life. I’m having a baby, I have a wild toddler, we moved, work has been out of control busy. All the things, all at once. You know?

It recently dawned on me that it’s been 5 years since I really started writing again (technically 5.5 now). Honestly, the thought kind of depressed me. It’s been 5 years and I feel like I have nothing to show for it. I don’t have an agent or a book deal or a book baby on the shelf in the local bookstore. It’s easy to look at what other people are doing and be like, “why am I so behind?” Because that’s how I feel a lot. I’m behind. I’m not where I am supposed to be. I should have done more, worked harder, achieved SOMETHING.

It’s easy to think I’m still in the same place I was five years ago, with nothing to show for my hours behind a laptop.

But I know that isn’t really true. So I thought I’d take a minute to talk about what I’ve done in the last 5 years, in case you might feel the same where you are. I’m choosing to celebrate my successes, as unnatural as that is for me.

5 Books Written (in various stages ranging from 0 drafts to final drafts)

1 Book Queried

Applied multiple mentorships, chosen for Kiss Pitch in 2022 and worked with the amazing Falon Ballard

Started this new website and blog

Started RomTalk twitter chat over a year ago

Learned so so much

Wrote my first genre blend (mystery + rom com)

And here’s the most important thing – I have the most incredible, supportive group of writing friends I could ever ask for. When I first started, I knew 1 other writer. And it stayed like that for a very long time. I found it really hard to make writing friends. But now I have so many! And some of them are quite frankly some of my favorite people on the planet and I don’t know what I would do without them.

Here’s a look at some of my projects (because I love my moodboards lol):

My art book, which I did Kiss PItch with and queried.

Christmas rom com, which I haven’t touched in like 2 years but hope to come back to and revise eventually.

My online dating rom com (which I wrote about here). It’s with some readers now, so I’ll be revising it later this year.

My most recent draft is a mystery rom com. It’s only a draft 0 but I am SO excited about this one and can’t wait to dive back into it as soon as I can.