Thus Far

Thanking God for all His wonderful blessings as the holiday season begins! 😊 Hope you all are having a glorious day and a magical start to your holiday season! 

I realized the other day that my first novel turns 10 this year. I had written other things before, of course—I’ve been a storyteller for as long as I can remember—but Elliot’s story was the first that I wrote trying to be a true author. Then titled Take Me As I Am, after the FM Static song , I began it on November 14 th , 2011, smack in the middle of NaNo season, after my mom stumbled across the NaNoWriMo Young Writers’ website and mentioned it to me. With no other plans for November, I set my goal at 5,000 words (mostly because I had no idea what word count was  😄 ) and shocked myself by making it to 14,000 within two weeks and finishing the first draft of the book. It was the first story I’d written seriously, my first complete start-to-finish piece, and the one that set me on my path, aiming to become a traditionally published author. We haven’t quite made it there yet for my scarred and sassy bae, but I’m incredibly proud of the story and of the things we have done togethe

Written October 2021. Part of the reason I started this blog was to learn to write again. Funnily enough, throughout most of 2020, I was on a roll. I worked on a short story, longform fanfiction, started two novels of my own, wrote a blog post a month on either Summer Snowflakes or Verbosity , and progressed in various other projects that I’d had sitting for a while. I wrote 40,000 words during NaNoWriMo and finished the final 10,000 in December. All that while completing my Associates Degree, dealing with constant shifts and changes at work, navigating various problems that come with life, and then all the rest that 2020 held for us in general. Somehow, in all of that, I managed to make writing my refuge; I wrote at least 60,000 words, not even counting all of what I edited, and I was and am extremely proud of that. Then 2021 happened. Suddenly, there was no more work to do. I had finished my degree. My job had more or less settled. The problems in my personal life… well, they

  So. I watched the Black Widow movie. What I Loved: Yelena. Just Yelena. Just look at her little face In all seriousness though, Natasha's sister made the movie—to the point that I almost feel like it should’ve been called Yelena Belova , instead of Black Widow . Granted, they’re both Black Widows, but, you know. I don’t think that’s a good thing on the storytelling side (more on that later), but from an entertainment standpoint, I didn’t mind it. Yelena is such a genuine sweetheart, so cute and funny and sassy and NORMAL, despite all she was subjected to and forced to do.  I think that's actually what made me fall so in love with her: the fact that she feels . So many others in that Marvel spy arena either pretend they don’t feel or laugh it off in this wry, sarcastic kind of way, or kind of walk around with sad eyes but never really say what’s going on. Yelena wears all her emotions on her sleeve, totally unapologetically. She still does the job and she focuses on the