Reassessing My Writing

I'm writing again!

I've done a lot of things in the past 2 years, I just haven't been writing. 

I spent 2023-2024 focusing on my career, and my work at Parry Sound Public Library is going to remain my core focus moving forward. As well, Parry Sound's first 2SLGBTQIA+ community organization, Parry Sound Pride, launched and I am proud to be on the board of directors along with many other fantastic people!

My career and my volunteer work are important to me and I needed the space to center them. For a time I contemplated not returning to writing. I lacked inspiration, but I also didn't miss the inspiration - something I consider a "writing slump" as opposed to "writer's block." I had plenty of other things keeping me busy!

Yet the writing continued to whisper to me. I did a bit of dabbling here and there, and story ideas came to me in my dreams. I lay awake and thought about what my characters were doing.

So here I am in 2025, coming back to writing!

However, I am coming back with different expectations.

I spent January re-reading Blue Revolution. I noticed a couple of things:

1) My grammar! Oof it's so bad! I do love throwing commas everywhere, don't I?

I'm in the process of fixing this up as well as some other minor edits.

2) It's so goofy! Which makes sense because I love "trashy" books. I love stupid fun things and that's absolutely reflected in my fiction. It's absurdist and goofy, honestly just plain stupid in places, but you know what? I love it.

3) It's not good enough for traditional publishing.

This isn't me saying anything about other independent titles, many of them are as good as trad published stuff. But being brutally honest about my own work: it's not. And I'm not saying this to garner sympathy or anything. I read a lot of books and I am self-aware enough by this point to see how my own writing is clunky, my dialogue is silly, and my tone is all over the place (melodramatic! goofy! gory! and always OVER THE TOP!) and I DON'T feel bad about it. I have a career that I love, working with a team of the most amazing, brilliant, kind people on the planet. I am grateful that I have the privilege of writing as a hobby and a creative outlet.

That being said, I am making some changes.

In the near future, I will be taking Blue Revolution off of Amazon.

I'm revising the grammar a bit (I'm still not perfect.)

I'm also going to find a different cover (Merilliza Chan's artwork is absolutely stunning and gorgeous, but I don't feel it accurately reflects the tone of the content. This was utterly my mistake and nothing at all to do with her. I still love Merilliza's art, go check out all her cool stuff!)

Playing with words is still so much fun for me. I am embracing myself where I'm at and that's a phenomenal feeling.  

Expect a re-release of Blue Revolution and the publication of Blue Odyssey later this year!

There will also be some deleted and alternate scenes posted here on my blog - I'm excited to have things to share! 

All the best,

S