Current status and updates for all my active projects, both on and offline. For quick synopses of each of these books, check out my Wattpad info doc: it's linked in my profile bio and in the intro chapter of this book.

Song of the Deep: Sitting at 120k of an estimated 200k words, this one's more than halfway written! It is currently posting well behind that, with a chapter buffer that runs until the end of June. I normally never post books until they're fully written and edited, but that's obviously difficult with a series, so this one's a bit of a rarity. The good news is that it writes very fast when I sit down and sprint-write it, which I love to do. While it's currently on hold (writing-wise) thanks to As the Crow Falls below, it should be done by mid-summer (well before its end-posting date in late 2022) at which point I will move straight into the third and final book, Water Will Rise. Weekly updates will continue until the end of the trilogy.

Can You Cook a Dragon (Flash Fiction Collection): I last updated this book during a flash-fic challenge I set myself in November, but had to cut short when school took over my life. It is currently quiet, but not dead; just sleeping. I love flash fiction in all three of the capacities I use it for: writing bonus scenes for my posted books, exploratory ones for future books, and general brain-dumps when I'm feeling creative. I'm slowly discovering that month-long challenges work best for my motivation on this, though, so this book will remain mostly quiet until I pick up another one of those. All previous promises remain—they might just take a bit longer than anticipated!

As the Crow Falls: Some of you might have seen this title in my book queue or flash fiction collection, where it's been lurking for most of a year. Unless you're on Discord with me, though, you probably haven't heard the news... this book ate my brain in mid-December, at which point I decided to try to sprint-write it—start to finish—between late December and the end of January. I started on December 19th. I am already a third of the way through (28/80k), and on track to meet or beat my goal. Am I crazy? Yes. Am I having fun? You bet. Does this mean there will be a brand-new, standalone novel coming to my profile between March and late May? Stay tuned!

Rocks Can Dance: Apparently I'm a masochist when it comes to writing long books, because this is another chonker: an estimated 160k, or ~600 pages for those of you who don't know wordcounts. I've written 70k of that. This book also does not sprint well, so my writing pattern is a lot more of me chipping away at it a few chapters at a time when I'm feeling inspired. It is currently also on hold thanks to As the Crow Falls. I expect it to be done, polished, and posting by the end of 2022, but won't beat myself up if that's not the case.

Stormrunner: This long-awaited Dreamcatcher sequel is ticking along quietly behind the scenes. It's a tougher project, with lots of required research, and some very sensitive topics that I want to handle with care as I'm writing. Because of this, it's still chilling in the research + early plotting phase, and will likely remain there until at least late summer. I want to finish Song of the Deep and Rocks Can Dance first! It will almost certainly move through active plotting and into the writing phase by the end of the year.

Hattu Empire Series (aka Desert Epic): This is another thing some of you might have seen in my info doc or flash fiction, but probably don't know much about if you're not on Discord. I finished my first epic series in September 2021, after nine years of writing. Up until March of that year, I'd wondered whether I would ever get an epic-series-sized idea again (and was incredibly sad about that), but March proved me wrong. The Hattu Empire Series will span 10+ books and track the start-to-end collapse of a desert Empire and civilization, baked into a Dark-Fantasy plot. I've earmarked at least two years for just worldbuilding, and have done 70k of that to date. Check out my flash-fiction collection for sneak peeks!

Open Novella Contest (ONC) 2022: There is no question that I will be participating in this year's ONC. Unlike last year, however, I am (probably) not going into it with my ideas already half-baked, though I have a few on standby that I might use if the prompts fit them. I'm waiting for the prompts to drop on February 1st before I decide! What I can say is that I'll be writing in one of my fringe genres—Sci-Fi, Horror, or Paranormal—rather than in pure Fantasy, so I'm looking forward to that. 

For those who didn't know, I am currently in grad school. I was hoping to finish by the end of this coming semester, but life things and pandemic things have conspired to make that no longer the case. I'll know in late spring (when summer course lists are released) whether I'll only be studying in the summer, or will be back in school again come fall, but I'm not too fussed either way; I have a stable job that's covering my bills and letting me reduce my course load, so my current holding pattern is a sustainable one.

What that means, though, is a few things. I'm extra excited for my courses starting soon, because the pressure of taking lots and finishing by April is now off the table. I might be studying in the summer, or I might not—and if I'm not, I'll have crazy amounts of time to dedicate to writing instead. That will carry through to the fall, where I'll be studying only part-time if I'm studying at all. All that to say, expect lots of books from me this year, but don't be surprised if I lose track of the days of the week or put my flash-fic collection on hold while I'm studying; the work comes in waves, and if you hadn't guessed from this book's title, it's just always chaos over here!

Baby pic of my cat. Well, one of my cats. I have three. This one is now four years old and still very cute, but kittens, friends. Kittens.