Hello and happy new year!

Okay so 2023 was a sloppy mess. I mean overall it wasn't a bad year per se, though I had some really rough patches medically (I'm doing great now btw so no worries there). It's just that things got knocked out of sorts around the start of the summer and my reliability was trash. However I can now explain what the heck was going on last year that made me utterly incapable of posting consistently.

Around the beginning of last summer, I had an opportunity to pitch a new story idea to Wattpad for their Wattpad Originals program. It was something I'd been rolling around in my head for awhile and seemed to fit the kind of story they were looking for. And it kind of was, but not really. Fortunately, the staff member I was working with believed in my vision and talent. Together we worked throughout the summer refining the idea and creating a sample of chapters to move on to the next step. Those chapters looked really different from that first chapter I pitched, but the general plot direction and characters remained.

Around my birthday at the beginning of October, I found out that my pitch was accepted and Wattpad would be acquiring it for the Wattpad Originals program. After that, things were a whirlwind. I had a few meetings, mainly with my editor at Wattpad, and began work on preparing for a launch date at the end of February. I didn't really start writing at full speed until around Halloween and I needed to complete 20 more chapters before the end of the year. With the death of my grandmother and my trip out of state to attend her funeral, my efforts were hampered, but I pressed on. It just meant other projects were going to have to fall to the wayside.

Fortunately, I finished the first drafts of all those chapters before Christmas and was able to take a little over a week off to clear my head. Now that we're past the holidays and into the new year, I'm back to work, focusing on the feedback my editor sent so I can revise and polish all the chapters before my trip to Disney at the end of the month. Wish me luck with that because I'm going to need it.

Anyway, that's what's been happening. A lot of stuff behind the scenes that I didn't know if I could talk about or how much I could say. But now I'm through the holidays and ready to share all I can about this exciting new project!

So what's this new project? It's a paranormal romantasy called Treasured by the Dragon. Basically, I've wanted to reimagine the whole "damsel in distress trapped in a dragon's castle" storyline. I know this is not a new idea, but hey, I like certain formulas and I'm not afraid to admit that.

Anyway, I'm taking a Beauty and the Beast meets Avatar approach. Our princess, Taliyah, is sacrificed to a dragon and carried off to his castle in the mountains. She's resigned to her fate but plans to die with dignity and isn't afraid to tell the dragon so. However, she doesn't expect him to respond or to shapeshift into a handsome man.

Now we meet, Cephias, the lord of a dwindling clan of shifters called the Firehearts. Cephias doesn't know what to do with her as he was expecting gold and not a princess for a tribute. So he stows her away in his castle for the time being. Now that she sees a chance for survival, it's her goal to break free as soon as possible.

As you can probably guess, things don't go according to plan for either of them. Taliyah learns about a shared enemy, Cephias is torn between his attraction to Taliyah and his duty to his people, and both wonder how they can ever be together when their people have been at odds for centuries.

That's the general idea. I hope it sounds appealing. I'm really excited about it and I hope some of you will join me for its release in late February. Unfortunately, I don't have exact dates and details about release yet, but I do know it will be launched around then and that chapters will be published twice a week thereafter.

Now as much as this has consumed my thoughts for the past six months, there are other things to be excited about in the coming year. Including the fifth and final Delilah Cross book! Have you seen the cover?

It took awhile, but I finally came up with a title--The Astral Eyes.

The book is up on my profile and can be added to your library. However, posts won't start until early March.

I feel really bad about pushing the start date from January to March, but Treasured by the Dragon takes priority now and I didn't know I'd have this commitment back when I first said I'd be starting this final book in January. By adding it to your library, you'll know right when that first chapter is posted.

I intend to be posting chapters once a week, though I won't have a day picked out for those posts until I know what days TbtD is going to be posted. So I'll update once I have that information. My hope is that I can squeeze in bite size chunks of writing for The Astral Eyes on top of my writing for TbtD. If I do that over the next couple months, hopefully I'll have a few chapters ready to go once I begin posting in March.

Okay, so those are the big things for 2024. Outside of that, I hope to return to Reverse Christmas in November. This may be something I just work on every holiday season until it's done. I just do not know what my bandwidth will look like now that I'm committed to two chapters a week for TbtD. Outside of that, I don't intend to write anything else since that's probably physically impossible.

I will however, continue to be doing edits and extra fluff for my finished stories. Last year, I spiffed up Love in his Lie and Her Christmas Legacy. This year I'm aiming to do His Only Weakness and The Dragon Blood Guardian. I expect both will get new titles along the way, though I would not be surprised if I only manage to do His Only Weakness  this year in regards to edits.

So I think that's it. I hope it is actually, because that's plenty... 2024 is going to be a whole new experience for me. One that is both exciting and terrifying. I really hope to have you with me along the way!