Hello everyone, welcome to 2023. I haven’t been very active on my blog lately, but there is still a lot happening behind the scenes that I think you might find interesting.

First let’s talk about 2022. I published two stories this year for the weekly Reedsy Writing Prompts contest, Paula’s Refuge in October and A Taste of Home in November. Both of these stories were written in a week, and I am quite happy with how A Taste of Home turned out. I’ve re-edited it and posted it on my Stories page here. As of the time of posting, it is also my featured story. I have also revamped two other Reedsy stories for my blog; The Wound-Up Heretic and Endlings. I’m looking to expanding or re-write a few more of these writing prompt stories this year, and will fast-track this process if there are any requests.

I do have some bigger publishing news from last year, though cannot yet share the details. I’ll just say that I have managed to sell a short story in a professional market. I am really excited about this, and cannot wait to share more information closer to publication. I also have a novella that is almost ready to be published on this site.

As for my 2022 reading, I don’t have too much to say. I did not get a single bingo on my card, but I still read a lot of great books. Continued the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir. Nona The Ninth is amazing. Also revisited The World of the Five Gods and the Honor Harrington universe, which was a lot of fun, and caught up on Becky Chamber’s new Monk and Robot stories. Despite being more of a science fiction fan, some of my favourite reads this year have been fantasy. Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes was one of my favourite books released in 2022. Oh, and of course I finally read T. Kingfisher’s A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking and loved it.

For 2023, I’m setting myself a lower number of books on my Goodread’s Reading Challenge (50 instead of 80), as I don’t want to make reading feel like a chore again. Plus, I do want to focus more on the writing than the reading and reviewing going forward. Am actually working on a project at the moment that I am pretty excited for.

But to stick with reading challenges, I have rolled myself another book bingo card for this year. This time I’m going to make a much bigger effort to fill it, and I’d like to invite anyone else out there to feel free to use it for their own challenges. I’m also willing to make new cards upon request, and more cards can be found on my book bingo page.

The past few years have been rough all around the world, but for me, there was a lot of good that happened in 2022. I’ve also got a lot to look forward to in 2023, both professionally and personally. I hope you can all join me for the fun, and I wish everyone here all the best for 2023.

~ Jayde