Feb. 2023 Writing Update

Happy February, readers and writers!

I hope that last month for all of you was a good one, and that this one is just as good or even better! Today I thought it best to give you an update on what I’ve been up to and what you can expect from me for the next month.

Book Reviews:

After much deliberation, I have decided that I will start posting book reviews biweekly in March 2023. 

This is a big step for me in many ways. I first started this site as a book review site starting at around 2018/2019. But as this site became a proper author site over the pats few years, I realized that I’m not as passionate about writing book reviews as I used to be. I still enjoy them, but not to the extent that I want to post them every single week of the year.

Posting book reviews biweekly also gives me more time to find books that I actually enjoy reading. In the past, I’ve often forced myself to read books that weren’t great and straight-up despised (thus creating so many 1-star book reviews). Despite my lack of enjoyment, I still wrote about them for the sake of having a book review to post that week. By posting book reviews biweekly instead of weekly, I’ll be more likely to find and write about books that I enjoyed reading (or at least somewhat). That will make the process of writing book reviews less draining and more fun for myself. I also hope this will be more fun for you as well.

Original Fiction:

The King’s Quest-inspired novel is still being drafted, but I’ve made progress! I have a good outline of what will happen in the whole book, so now it’s a matter of writing and fleshing out scenes. I’d love to finish the first draft by the end of February if possible, or early March at latest. For those that follow me on Tumblr, you may have seen some posts of mine discussing how things are going while writing this novel. I still don’t have a title for this, but I hope to figure out a working title by the end of the month.

Remember how I mentioned, during the previous update post, that I was writing a kidlit fantasy book? Well:

1. It now has a working title: “Sadie’s Search For The Missing Necklace!”
2. I’m pursuing traditional publication for this book!

It’s been a very daunting journey stepping into the traditional publication realm for this book. Querying and pitching to traditional publications is something new to me (especially since I pursued self-publishing for my first book), and I hope that it can find a good publisher somewhere. Based on what I’ve read up and heard about others’ experience, I know it’ll take some time, but I do think that it’ll be worth the effort in at least trying. As of this writing, I’ve already pitched this book to a publisher or two. According to their guidelines they could respond as late as around four months from then (late April or early May of this year). I’ll give an update by then as of how that went!

As for “An Engagement To Die For,” I am still currently having it read by beta-readers. I hope that this step can be done soon (by the end of the month) but we’ll see how things go.

Meanwhile, I’m still submitting poetry and short stories to lit mags! If there are any new publications, I’ll let all of you know through this site!

Fanfiction:

I started posting chapters for my Super Smash Bros./The Last Story crossover fanfic, “Super Smash Bros: The Next Story” back in January! Chapters 4, 5 and 6 will be posted this month, with a new The Last Story oneshot fanfic to be posted during the last week of February!

I can also confirm now that “Super Smash Bros: The Next Story” will have about 19-20 chapters. The entire story is split into two arcs. The first arc encompasses the first nine chapters, while the second arc takes up the rest of the story. There will be more information on that in March and/or April’s writing update posts!

I also took last month as an opportunity to FINALLY crosspost a Critical Role Bakery AU fanfic I originally posted on Archive Of Our Own to Fanfiction.net! It’s called “Critical Rolls: The Bakery AU No One Asked For,” and I hope you enjoy reading it!

Those are all the updates I have for this month! Thank you for supporting my work so far. It means a lot to me, and I hope all of you enjoy reading my works!

If you like this post, please share it with your fellow writers and readers! Also, feel free to follow my site and/or like my Bookbub, Facebook Page, Twitter, and Tumblr for more reader/writer posts, fanfics, book reviews, and other updates!