Hi blog! I have been very distracted and consumed for the five or so weeks since joining a writer discord server which has propelled me into the writing world in an exciting, but overwhelming way. I’ve gotten three critique partners who are blazing through my work and responding to it in the way I always hoped readers would respond to Andrew and Micah and co.

I also found an absolutely phenomenal typographer who’s been working with me to decorate Deny Me, The Nightshade Boy‘s cover.

Um, also, I don’t know that I’ve announced on DIC that Deny Me is the final name of the book? The trilogy is:

Deny Me, The Nightshade Boy
Relinquish Me, Your Broken Knight
Promise Me, Lord Heartwood

Overall I’ve been happily committed to my self-publishing route, but I’m also looking at indie presses going…if they would pay for printing, is that so bad…?

I’ve really hit my stride with Twitter and I’m happy with my growth trajectory within the writing community. I wanted to write my numbers but it feels lame, even though it seems like for unagented writers that I’m hitting the Sweet Spot for good engagement and a sense of community.

I’ve also been working on lots of promo art and just ordered some acrylic pins and glitter stickers this morning of Micah looking ADORABLE

But I had to neglect Andrew during this round and that makes me sad because he turned out SO SWEET

Anyway these will be fun to display for Super Stories next month.

My discord server was pretty jazzed about Pride Month starting yesterday. I’d already decided I wanted to make Pride-themed stickers for my cast but yesterday I got the itch to just start a full-scale drawing of them and add them with their lil Pride flags. It led to some interesting discussions regarding Micah since he evades any sexuality identification for all of The Heartwood Trilogy. There’s an undefined sexuality flag, and a couple of clients and I thought that there was a flag with question marks, but when deciding Micah’s design re: flags it ended up being the snappiest just to do a queer rainbow flag.

Sam is a favorite among my readers so I was excited to include him in this. Just so weird since he’s the only new character in the cast!

I was also yearning for the beach so I made this painterly one of Andrew and Micah looking super queer, and also because I’m obsessed with bucket hats rn because I drew a pfp for one of my readers (Olive!) and they were wearing one and I fell in love hehe.

And yes, I did draw Micah’s rig too exaggerated the first time and had to shrink it ehehehe.

We’re re-watching New Girl (again) and my first CP Vic loves New Girl too so I ended up turning Andrew into this Nick Miller quote hehe.

I want to release bookmarks as a bonus for preordering so I cooked up this whimsical magical beauty.

So yeah, as you can see, my focus right now is on promotional work for DENY ME, but I’m excited by how good a lot of the stuff looks.