Good News: I Have Not Been Eaten By a Bear!

Hello there, friends!

Happy Sunday! It’s been a while. Perhaps so long that there might be unlikely rumors circulating around about the events leading up to my drop off the blogging universe. Whether or not you do actually believe I was eaten by a bear or not, good news: I wasn’t.

But really. I haven’t been doing a very good job of keeping you guys up-to-date on all the happenings with my novel and my work as a writer, and I do apologize for that. Summer is coming to an end, and that means senior year for me and a whole slew of events that will strike one after another and ultimately lead to a fairly decent conclusion on this chapter of my life.

However, before we reach that point, I’ll let you know about how everything is going with Haywood Micaye and all my other writing endeavors!

First and foremost, if you haven’t noticed, during my posting hiatus I added some new things to the “Ashlynne’s Works” tab on the menu bar. More specifically, I’ve uploaded a poem and a short story for your free reading! Indiegogo contributors might recognize the title of the short story I’ve decided to upload, but I assure you when it comes time for you to receive your copy of Haywood Micaye and mug there will be an exclusive story in lieu of “Dear You.” I hope you don’t mind.

Anyways, feel free to check the works out! I should have an essay to upload under the “Essays” section as well within the next few weeks, but for now that particular tab is empty.

Now to my other writing adventures. As it turns out, I’ve actually done quite a bit of work these past few months, albeit slowly and in sporadic chunks. So, month by month, here’s some of the important things that went down:

MARCH AND APRIL

• This was a kind of quiet time. I worked on some more editing on Haywood before passing it off to another beta reader. He gave me some great feedback not only on the book but also about my plans for it.

MAY

• This is where things kind of exploded for a bit.
• A few weeks before school got out, I heard back on a poetry contest I had entered in to a couple months back. Even though poetry is not my strong suit, I accepted the challenge and actually ended up getting an honorable mention for it! The poem, if you are interested, can be found here, or if you mouse over the “Poetry” section in “Ashlynne’s Work’s”, you’ll see it as the only poem listed. There is a story behind it, as there always seems to be with anything I do, but it is a tale for another blog post, I’m afraid. Also, it’s an acrostic, so if you want the full message it spells out read the title and then the first letter on the left of every line.
• At the end of May, I made contact with an editor and he was very interested in my project, so much so that we ended up making a contract arrangement for him to look over Haywood Micaye at the end of the summer! The pricing was a little more than what I had been anticipating, but the contract has him doing a few integral things to help me get my novel into the best state it can be, and for that endeavor I am willing to pay.

JUNE

• Again, the world got to be quiet again as I dealt with other life stuff beyond my writing.

JULY

• And now, to more present times. I recently finished a writing workshop being held at my local library led by Angela Roquet, a delightful woman who has made quite a career through her writings, specifically her Lana Harvey book series. Angela and I had an opportunity to talk about writing and marketing and all the wildly interesting things she has discovered as she’s gone through her writing career. Her advice has helped clarify a lot of misconceptions and uncertainties I had, and I appreciated it vastly.
• Another exciting thing to come out of the writing workshop is a new short story, written by me. What’s exciting is that this short story is going to be collected into an actual book: all of the participants in the workshop are allowed to take the short stories they wrote and have it collected into an anthology! As of right now, I do not know about release dates or anything for the anthology, but as soon as I do I will be sure to pass the information along. The anthology will not only contribute a piece by myself, but also works from several other young writers who attended the workshop as well. The proceeds will go back to the libraries the event was held at to help fund other events and happenings within them.

The cover of the anthology from last year’s workshop 

All in all, I feel like I have done a lot to help advance my writing and put me into a place where I feel excited  to be going into the next several months. I am incredibly pumped about the anthology, as this will be the first time I will ever be legitimately published in a book. I’m also super proud of my contribution to it as well. My piece is titled ‘A Society of Twilight’ and it follows a psychometric detective and his efforts to solve the murder of a teenage boy. It was a lot of fun to put together and play around with, and overall I think it’s an interesting exploration of the good and evil in our world.

That basically hits all the broad strokes as to where I am now with Haywood and everything else I’ve been writing. Be sure to check back for dates in relation to the anthology release and other posts on here as well. I promise I will remain more diligent with my posts from here on out, and also promise to be releasing some new content on here very soon.

Until next time,

Ashlynne