My first substack
First time trying substack. Please standby as I figure things out. This first post will be chaos.
I guess this is where I ramble about things?
In the growing world of social media, I guess it’s important to be visible to all the places. All at once. All the time. I promise the next posts will be more…eloquent? Fun? Right now I’m just trying to figure things out. Look below to see things I will be talking about in the soon-ish future.
1. My writing journey up to now.
From pre-teen me writing fanfiction (before I knew what fanfiction was) to me writing partial story after partial story, to me FINISHING a story, getting into a sticky mess with a not-very-well-organized ‘hybrid’ publisher/ vanity press to writing a whole new book in 7 months and jumping into querying. (The right way this time).
2. Who wants to see me ramble anyway?
I’m hoping you. :)
The type of community I’m hoping to build here is one of new writers, who don’t know where to look for help or support, writers who are also knee deep in the query trenches, to share in the pain, uplift when that partial or full request comes through, and to bite my nails along aside you as you see yourself in the agent’s “Maybe” pile for weeks on end.
Or you’re a curious reader who wants to glimpse behind the scenes at a silly little writer’s life.
All are welcome. :)
3. How did I get started?
I can point to two series explicitly that are responsible for launching me into the writing world.
Twilight. (I know. You can laugh. You can cringe. But 12 yo me could not stop reading it. Over. And Over. And Over.)
And:
Avatar the Last Airbender— the animated cartoon on nick…thought I’d specify. Just incase. (Cuz it’s not like they made a movie or anything…right? No movie at alllll)
Even though these shows and books is what launched me into writing more and more, there was one story that laid the foundation for “Oh. Writing can be fun.”
It was a 4th (or maybe 5th) grade writing prompt. The idea of writing against a timer terrified me. Then the prompts became fun.
My first little story that I ever finished was “When Dinosaurs Come Back.” Dinosaurs spontaneously appeared in New York City. (But not one believed the news until 15 years later for whatever reason…totally insane right?) The Main characters contained all the wild dinos in Central Park…but the meat eater ones had to go.
Flash forward to middle school, and my need to be writing constantly increased. Between me carrying around an extra notebook for my stories, and my Alphasmart. Three files for classwork…the rest was fan-fiction.
If there was a free moment in the day, my nose was in a book, or I was curled over a notebook or typing away.
8th grade was what marked the time of writing original works, the first, along side a friend I still hold dear to this day.
4. Common Theme:
Since Twilight and Avatar: The Last Airbender was so big for me in my formative writing years, my books tend to hold a common theme.
Except more grown-up.
I love dark and spooky, but I also love found family, growing and overcoming something BAD, and I love when complex villains are suddenly not the worst thing a character has to face. (Like when we were kids being afraid of Zuko as a villain realizing Azula was a far bigger, and much deadlier threat.)
See below for a teaser of what all I have in store for my current project: Midnight City, an adult paranormal romance with a little smidge of mystery.
I hope you’ll subscribe and tag along.
5. What would you like to hear about?
I plan on expanding on the stories above with time while I figure things out with this platform. What are you questions? What do you want to hear about first?