Issue #1

MAY 2026

Welcome

Thank you so much for joining me on my writing and publishing journey. If you're wondering why you're receiving this newsletter, it's because I think you're amazing and want you along on this adventure. I hope you'll decide to hang around for all the inevitable ups and downs that come with pursuing a creative path. As someone once told me, unless you've always wanted to be an Olympic gymnast or a prima ballerina on the stage at Lincoln Center, there's no set timeline for going after your dreams. Maybe this will help inspire you to go after yours.

Reflections

This past weekend, I wrote the two most exciting words of any author's writing process, "The End."

I started my manuscript four years ago, when I saw my aging face in the mirror and wondered why most "heroine's journeys" featured young women on the cusp of adulthood experiencing first love and their first adventure. What would it mean to have a main character who felt that life had passed her by? Especially in the early 1800s, when one was considered ancient by 40 (okay, maybe an overstatement).

I didn't mean to take four years to write this book, but it turns out that a year and a half of chemotherapy, radiation, surgeries, and chemo brain can draw the drafting stage out longer than expected. The two and a half years of revisions and rewrites may also have seemed endless, but now I realize they helped me learn to do better the next time around. And I intend to keep going.

I've wanted to be a writer since the day I learned to read (I didn't just read a word; I read an entire book about zoo animals). If I didn't like the ending of one of my little Golden Books, I'd take a pencil and rewrite the story. It gave me a sense of control over the world around me. As a kid who moved around a lot, my imagination was my refuge. I didn't know if anyone else would ever want to read my stories; all I knew was that I had to put them down on paper for myself.

Very few people have known about my secret literary aspirations. What if I never finished a book? What if I did and it was bad? What if no one wanted to publish it? What if people made fun of me? What if it didn't turn out to be a viable career? Those were the questions that tortured me, and that made me choose International Relations over English as a major in college.

What gave me the courage to publicly own my dream was my cancer diagnosis four years ago. When you stare death in the face, it puts the rest of your fears into perspective. It also makes you realize life is fleeting, and the only worthwhile way to live it is by doing what you love. Even if I never publish a book, even if AI comes for our art, I'll keep putting pen to paper and sacrificing my Saturdays at the local library. Because every "The End" should be followed by a "Chapter 1."

Craft Corner

As much as we might wish it were the case, writing is more than just letting your imagination spill out onto the page in some Pollack-esque masterpiece. Beyond talent, there is craft and technique, usually involving terms we think we know but don't always understand.

Let's talk motifs. If I were to ask you to name the motifs in your favorite novel, would you be able to give me an immediate and confident answer? If so, you're better than me. I get theme, plot, and tone, but as I was considering the elements of my current WIP (work in progress for those not constantly wrestling with one), my mind went blank when it came to motifs. Even its definition, "A repeated element—like an idea, image, symbol, sound, or pattern—that helps develop a work's main theme," sounds either pretentious or vaguely abstract, like an author trying too hard to be literary. Instead of overthinking it, I just wrote and let the patterns reveal themselves.

Since my WIP is called The Oleander Message, I realized I often use floral references to define my female characters. My main character longs for red roses and dark violets; one collects only wildflowers; and another is told she resembles a camellia. The single note perfumes they choose as their signature scents range from animalic jasmine to powdery heliotrope. These motifs support my theme of women taking their power wherever they can find it and using nature to their advantage.

So, the next time you read a book and begin to notice those patterns, think about what the author is secretly telling you. It may be that they don't even realize what they are trying to do until it's already been done.

Journal Prompt

Do you remember your first daydream? What was it like to realize you could control your imagination to create an entire new universe in your mind?

My May Library