Excited To Share This With You

Can I tell you why I’m excited?

I’ve written about how it’s okay when goals and dreams change or evolve. It actually a good thing that happens, because life is dynamic. It changes. Since early last month, that’s what has happened to me.

If you follow my blog or social media, you already know that I read a lot and am an enthusiastic advocate of literacy. I don’t care what you read, just read.

Well, somewhere around a year ago I went back to school. Again. Why?

I’d decided to finally pursue my long-time dream of writing fiction. I figured I better learn about the industry itself. Classes began. I had my first experience with workshopping — having other people read and criticize my creative writing classwork. It was simultaneously frightening and exhilarating.

In the midst of that, I answered an open call for short stories for an anthology. In case you’re trying to remember what that is, an anthology is a collection of short stories written around some type of central theme. I remember that entries for the open call were due on my mother’s birthday, April 5.

Last month, (October 2022), I found out my submission was selected to be included. Many of the other authors whose work was also selected are people whose work I have read before. Can you tell that I’m excited?

My creative writing will be under a pen name because people do have trouble saying my last name correctly. From the day I met my late husband, that was something of an ongoing joke in our lives. In December, I’ll be sharing my pen name, the address of my author’s website, and my social media related to that.

How does this affect From In Here?

The only change I am making to this is that instead of updating everything weekly, it will update twice a month. The newsletter will also go out twice a month. Social media and contests will continue as usual.

During the next couple of weeks, I’ll be catching up on email and other things. Be assured that contest-related email is always opened and logged immediately! But I haven’t had time to correspond personally with anyone, and I want to return and do that as usual.

When will the creative writing be published?

The anthology’s editor has said that she believes it will be available on Amazon in January. I’m working on a novella that will hopefully be published not too long after that. Then there will be a second novella and a full-length romantic suspense novel that will kick off a series. Each of those projects is at different points of completion on my computer.

This is a whole new experience for me, learning about how to get the “right” cover design and figure out the list of other tasks required to get a book out there in the public arena. I had a timeframe and wait for it all and that was upended when I was fortunate enough to have my story chosen for inclusion in the anthology. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow!

I’m planning the next blog update to be on December 12 with the newsletter the following day. Winners of Thanksgiving will be announced on social media next week and in the newsletter on December 13.

We are going to have two different holiday giveaways! One will launch on December 12 and end on December 24. The other will start on December 29 and conclude on January 23. These dates might change a little bit, but they are the plan right now.

I’m going to be having contests in the weeks and months ahead, asking you to help me name characters and businesses, and things like that. It’s going to be even more exciting to experience a series of technical, help me quickly this

If you have any thoughts, ideas, or questions you’d like to share, e-mail me at frominhere@gmail.com. Find me on Instagram and Twitter @frominhere.