2024, you suck, but also, thanks for trying to make up for it.

It’s been about a year since my last post and things across my life are completely different than they were then.

I’ve been trying not to dwell on the bad, but it’s hard when there’s been so much of it. My grandma died, my dad died, my cat died, I had an account hacked and a life-savings amount of money stolen, and I gave up the nomadic lifestyle. Rough…but then I could practically feel the dark cloud lifting from my life.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the drive to write anything this past year. Part of it has been all the life challenges this year, and I did manage to release Subscription Children, but I think a bit of it was the shell shock from the disappointing reception I got from my first book, The Light in Death. It was a wake up call on how difficult it is to break out, but it also just wasn’t good writing. It was just fun to write in a capacity that wasn’t serious starting out. When it was picked up by the booktuber libraryofaviking’s patreon book club for the 2023 December raffle, I was surprised. I also knew it wouldn’t be well-received.

As I suspected, Johan rated it as the worst book he read that year and the book received some bad reviews as a result of his members not enjoying it either. I did expect it, but it never feels great to have a creative endeavor criticized. Another surprise from the experience though was someone asking about when the sequel would be coming out because the levity of the book helped him through a rough time in his life. The truth is, I imagine Johan was dreading having to put forward a review for something he didn’t enjoy, to a patreon member, so I feel bad for putting him in that position.

A year later now, the same exact situation came up with my second book, Subscription Children (a standalone that’s completely unrelated to The Light in Death) which won the most recent patreon raffle for Matt’s Fantasy Book Reviews.

Honestly, I had no idea it was chosen until I got a notification for an early access review. I skimmed the email and realized it was MY book he was reviewing. Spoiler: He didn’t hate it. Actually, he kind of enjoyed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF3JgYWZksw

It’s not 5 stars, but that only means that there’s room to grow. It gives me back a little ambition to return to writing. I mean, Blood Daisy HAS been sitting there completed, patiently waiting to be edited for over a year. Maybe it’s finally time to revisit it…