I’m back! It’s been a while (My bad)

Alright. So. I know it’s been a hot minute since I’ve written on here—like, a scorching hot minute—and there are a multitude of reasons for that. Chiefly among them, I’ve been exceedingly busy. Turns out, raising a toddler is a full-time gig in and of itself...and on top of that, I’ve been protesting, writing, guitaring, making art, and in general being a societal nuisance to the best of my ability because these are some dark times, and we need some good trouble. At the end of the day, I have had no energy left to type up a generic blog post with some vague life update.

But as part of my (very belated) New Year’s resolution: I’m going to try to actually keep up with the blog this time. My goal is to post twice a week, every Monday and Thursday, and I’ve been planning out some topics and blog ideas I think you—my faithful audience of like, three people—will be interested in. So I’ll be sharing some of the more interesting excerpts from my doctoral dissertation, now that it’s complete and published; some behind-the-scenes music stuff; monthly reading roundups; any art I make that I think is particularly cool; those random life updates (we’ve got a lot coming in 2026); and, of course, writing progress.

As ever, I have about a dozen different creative projects underway. In no particular order:

• Querying a romantasy novel (working title: The Night Chemist, as you may have noticed from my home page; while I love this title, it could very likely change over the course of the publishing process). This is the first novel I’ve attempted to go the trad-pub route. My previous books are way too bonkers, so I didn’t even try. But this book? I think it is actually marketable. Time will tell. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but I’m not gonna hold my breath. It’s a competitive, over-saturated market out there, and my book is more of a slow-burn character-driven romantasy, as opposed to the fast-paced adrenaline-fueled romantasies with stabby FMCs that seem to be most popular right now.

• Writing a prequel short story that takes place about six months prior to TNC kicking off, when my heroine is about to take her licensing exam to become a chemist...and may have accidentally uncovered a poisoning

• Gathering initial beta reader feedback on The Blood Alchemist (working title of TNC’s sequel)

• Practicing some new music for Olga’s Burning Sparrows (we’ve got two songs out, which I’ll post about sometime soon, and more on the way)

• Getting back into art by dusting off my iPad and Procreate app to illustrate scenes/characters from TNC (I was posting these on insta, but I decided to take them down for now; I’ll maybe share some later, but probably not story-related)

• And a few other things, but I am running out of time to type. Dinner’s not gonna cook itself, after all.

That's all I've got for now! As I said, I’ve got some things planned, so hopefully I’ll have some semi-regular posts for you this year—late start, I know—and some fun updates, too!