I would like to try a little experiment.

I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a newsletter. However, I’ve been doing a lot of research and found myself faced with a few barriers that will take some time to overcome, so I’ve decided in the meantime, I’m going to try writing a type of newsletter, but in the form of a blog post. I’m not sure how this is going to work out, but I’m going to keep it pretty relaxed and fun for the sake of experimentation!

Bookish News

This month, The Enchanted Crown by Bethany Atazadeh will be releasing on March 23rd and I’m super excited about it! It is the fourth and final installment in The Stolen Kingdom series and I have the amazing opportunity to read and review an ARC copy! I finished it just last night and it did not disappoint. Keep an eye out; I plan to do a full series review here on my blog soon after The Enchanted Crown releases!

In preparation for The Enchanted Crown’s release, the first book in the series, called The Stolen Kingdom is available for free on the Kindle app until March 5th, I believe. These books are YA Fantasy and are loose retellings of various fairytales like Aladdin, the Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast. If that sounds like something you would enjoy, I highly recommend you check these books out.

Works In Progress

In July of 2020, I finished the first draft of Demon Fall, my post apocalyptic demon hunter novel. I haven’t been posting many updates, but so far, I’m almost done with the clean up revisions and the alpha reading phase. I’ve been learning a lot from the feedback I’ve been getting and the revisions I’ve been doing, and I’ve identified a good handful of problems I’m going to need to massage out when I take on draft two. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have my clean up revisions for my alpha readers done by the end of March and I can start creating a developmental revision plan to overhaul the story. I’m really excited for the progress I’m starting to make! I still am not 100% sure when I’m planning to query, but I’m thinking I might want to get ready for a session of PitMad in the summer or something of the like to help me get my logline down. But we’ll see. I’ve got a lot on my plate as it is, and I can’t move forward with anything until I finish the current step.

In other news, I haven’t officially announced this yet, but I’ve started working with an illustrator on a comic book series. The project is still in its infancy and my illustrator and I are doing a lot of behind the scenes leg work, but the we are 90% done writing the story of this first installment and have 90% finished outlining the second. I’m hoping we can finish the writing pretty soon here so we can move onto paneling and formatting and revisions, but again, we gotta take it one step at a time. 

Blog Content 

I recently decided to get more aggressively involved in reviewing books for Reedsy.com, and in doing so, I discovered I liked their book ranking system a lot more than my own. They use the five star system like Goodreads does, and I’ve decided that moving forward, I’m going to use this ranking system as well. Most other bookstagrammers and reviewers use this system as well, and I figured I should probably be doing so as well.

Book Reviews

I announced on my Instagram several months back, I think it was around Christmas time that I was reading and planning to review the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness. I’m still planning on doing that! I enjoyed the series immensely and I can’t wait to share my in depth thoughts with you about it. I feel bad that the review is coming so late, but with how my life fell apart at the end of last year, I couldn’t keep up. But regardless, the Chaos Walking review is coming, it just is bumping into the last half of The School for Good and Evil Series and my upcoming review of The Stolen Kingdom series. 

I haven’t yet announced it, but I’ve decided on the next books I’d like to review! I just received copies of Elizabeth Lin’s Spin the Dawn from the library this week and I’m so stoked to read them. I discovered a while back I have a love for books that have Asian or Eastern influences when I read Eon, by Allison Goodman for the first time. The gorgeous culture fascinates me and I’ve been looking for more books with this influence. I’m so excited to get started on Spin the Dawn after I finish reading The Enchanted Crown.

I’ve also gotten my hands on a copy of The Brass Queen, by Elizabeth Chatsworth. I heard about The Brass Queen through my mentoring group, as Elizabeth is also in it, and I’ve been looking for a good steampunk novel. I read her sample first chapter and got hooked! I’m thinking I’ll review it after the Spin the Dawn series. Additionally, I have a couple of reviews through Reedsy coming out. Aiya Seven, by M. Ryan Taylor comes out today along with my review, and then later this month, I’ll have a review for The Bowling Ball Bombing, by Kordel Lentine.