Twice as Nice
It’s official! I am now a two-times published author. Mwahaha! Bow to me plebs! But seriously, it’s here. The Secret of Hidden Creek went live overnight with one preorder via Kindle (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HDHDTQDN). Took me way too long to come up with a Twitter/Threads length post for that announcement, too. Now I get to sit back and watch as all the spam bots hit those posts trying to pitch whatever “service” they’re scamming… I mean, “offering.”
That’s become a serious problem on social media, especially the short-form platforms like Twitter and Threads. You can’t say a single word about writing or editing without getting inundated with spam accounts. And gods help you if you mention the words “beta reader!”
Anyway, so what prompted the idea for this story? That’s actually a fun one. It’s a combination of a post I read on social media and my childhood love/hate relationship with the traumatizing coming-of-age novels every English teacher’s curriculum I swear is based on, most specifically in this case, Bridge to Terabithia. How much so? Michael, the boy protagonist, has a crush on the neighbor girl, Amy BURKE.
That book… That book… That book is quite literally the trigger event for my first foray into writing. Leslie’s death hit me so hard as a kid that I actually sat down and wrote a sci-fi/fantasy fanfic about these people with magical powers that went into the book to save her. It was terrible, of course, but props to 4th or 5th-grade me for trying. So you can all thank/blame (in accordance with your personal taste of me and/or my work) Katherine Paterson for my being here.
Now that it’s out, it’s time to shift my focus to other work. I’m still trying to finish the spooky fun middle-grade monster academia, but my main focus needs to shift to rewriting and revising a young adult urban fantasy that so desperately wanted to be a paranormal romance in time for Valentine’s Day. Still not sure what’s going on with the magazine and Ebon Maw’s future over there, so I might be bringing it over here.
Off to it!
