Happy New Year, friends.
I hope the start of your year has gone well. If this post seems a bit late, I needed a break after the end of last year. I needed to find other hobbies, focus on new priorities, and renew different areas of my life. Tis the season of beginnings, isn’t it? Resolutions, renewals, rebirths, resets, and restarts. The new year brings a sense of something clean and fresh. An opportunity to do better. To be better.
In order to grasp the new, sometimes we need to let go of the old and that can be challenging. Old clothes, old habits, old memories, old coping methods, old relationships, old environments. These things may have fulfilled a purpose in the past, but if they no longer serve us or help us, they need to be let go. If they are not helping us grow into the new person we are trying to be, we need to replace them with things that will. But it is oh so comfortable staying where we are, isn't it? I don’t particularly like change, but if I don’t act and work to change for the better, that only guarantees things will stay the same or change for the worse. Stagnation is only avoided through change. I want to be better. So I must change.
I did not start off the year planning resolutions to keep, but I ended up with a long list of things I want to accomplish anyway. Things I want to do before next January. I broke those goals down into what I’d like to achieve within 6 months. Broke that down into monthly goals. Broke those down into weekly goals. All the way down until I had a list of daily things to work on. Have I met all those goals every single day? No, but every day I can start again. I have something to aim for every day that I know will help me improve over time if I stick with it. Some days I don’t meet all my goals. Some days I surpass my goals and do extra. But every day, I try. Just keep trying. Who knows, maybe next year I’ll be a better person than I am this year. Maybe next week I’ll be a better person than I am this week. Maybe I can be a better person today than I was yesterday.
In terms of new story posts, there are no story posts. I have not done much writing since November and the writing I have done isn’t great. I still have story ideas and scenes and writing prompts pop up so I know I’m not free of this calling yet. While some of the new Ice Sword Chronicles content is great, there are parts of it that don’t feel right. Something’s not clicking the way it should or the way I want it to. If you’ve read it and there are parts of it you don’t like, guess what? There are parts of it I don’t like either. I was debating whether to finish out the editing for what I have (over 50k words) and post it or completely start over (again). As my wonderful and inspiring co-author Misty reminded me, it’s still a rough draft. The time I spent rewriting ISC hasn’t been wasted. If anything, I’m still laying the foundation for a better future draft. 90% of ISC is silly banter dialog. Misty compared my effort to an animator trying to make a whole movie, but only having the voice actor bits to work with (which was spot on). I suppose at some point I’ll finish posting the rest of ISC Part One, but I need a writing break right now.
Instead, I picked up a new (old) hobby. My amazing, supportive, spectacular husband and lovely, awesome in-laws got me a keyboard for Christmas. ^_^ Due to lack of time and various other circumstances, I haven’t touched (much less practiced with) a piano in probably close to 7(-ish?) years. Some of the knowledge is there, but the skill is gone. When I sit down to play, it feels like I’m starting completely over. I don’t know how to read notes. Yes, I “studied” it, but I also cheated a lot through playing by ear (sorry, years of piano teachers (OO) ). When I pick up sheet music to play, I am illiterate. I have to start from the beginning. I have to learn the keys and how to properly read them this time. I have to stumble my way through the simplest children's songs. Yeah, it is incredibly embarrassing and frustrating. It’s easy to berate myself for losing this skill. “I should know this” “Why am I struggling with this”. No one likes starting over. But starting over is also the only way I’m going to improve. Practice. Keep trying. “Everyone starts somewhere” “You’re doing better today than you were yesterday” “You can do it”. I noticed it makes a difference when you WANT to learn something. And I do want to learn. So I’ll keep practicing. I’ll keep trying. I'll get better.
Along with these New Year’s goals, I’ve got the usual list of things to improve: spiritual health, physical health, financial health, mental health, etc. You’ve heard it before. You probably have those goals yourself. Just keep trying. You can do it. In thinking about these things, and the concept of starting over as a whole, I wrote a song. I already put that song in a separate post because this one is long enough as it is (check previous post). Either way, thanks for stopping by, friend. I appreciate you.
~ Always Hope~
Quick recap of all my current writing projects:
Ice Sword Chronicles (ISC)
Ice Sword Chronicles is the story I started with my co-authors (DJ, Misty, Brady, and others) back in high school. It started from a game (wrong answers to obvious questions) and I decided I was going to turn this thing into a book. Or several books. Rewriting this is what I worked on in November during National Novel Writing Month in 2023. My plan is to split this into 3 main story parts/books. I finished writing the first part last year. This is the story that haunts me and that I have determined I will get published some day or die trying. All current story content can be found at this blog link: https://iceswordchronicles.blogspot.com
Ice Sword Chronicles blurb:
Hanna is a super-powered hero with a dark past she doesn’t remember. When her friends get kidnapped by an evil villain, will her resolve be enough to rescue them? Little does Hanna know, this simple rescue operation will lead to the discovery of a mirror dimension, new friends, new enemies, dragons, and a battle between good and evil the likes of which she has never before encountered. The fate of multiple worlds hangs in the balance. Can Hanna overcome the darkness of her past? Will she rescue her friends in time? Will her decisions save humanity or doom it to destruction? How far would you go to protect the ones you love?
Fire Sword Chronicles (FSC)
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Fire Sword Chronicles is the sequel to ISC, set 13 years later. Not currently available to the public (but if you want to read it, ask and I’ll send you a link). This was the book/story I worked on when I won National Novel Writing Month in 2022. This is the golden child of my writing non-career because it’s the first story that came together and was written start-to-finish in one go with minimal editing. Which is hilarious to me because the story focuses on one of the most troublesome, problematic characters in all of ISC (yes, I'm looking at you, EDJ). Frustrations immortalized in comic form below. I guess that means this story is technically finished, but is sitting in editing limbo while I work on the others.
Fire Sword Chronicles blurb:
A retired group of heroes must come together when one of their own goes missing. After saving the world once years ago, they realize the peace they established has been a facade and evil has continued to grow in spite of their efforts. Can they save their world a second time? Can they save their friend from certain doom? What would you do to protect the ones you love?
Frozen Memoirs (FM):
Frozen Memoirs is a prequel to ISC, exploring the history of my main character (Hanna). Starts at her creation as an Other and follows her path as she goes from training to be a thief and assassin to being captured and genetically experimented on to finally becoming the leader of a superhuman hero organization shortly before the start of ISC. All story content for FM (including new rewritten content) can be found here: https://hannaprequel.blogspot.com
Frozen Memoirs blurb:
Hanna. A girl plagued by present struggles and an unknown history. Is she good or evil? Friend or foe? Caring or hateful? Weak or strong? Hero or villain? Maybe all of the above. You decide.
Spark
Spark is another prequel to ISC set between FM and ISC while also following a storyline congruent with the main events of ISC. This is the newest story in the lot and one I have the least amount of writing in thus far. This is meant to be a shorter story than the previous three and is meant to fill in some blanks with one of the characters in ISC. I’m not saying any more than that because: 1 - I don’t have a whole lot to go off of, 2 - I don’t want to give away any spoilers (though I have a feeling my co-authors can guess which character this story is about). Not open to the public and no story blurb.
The Promised Land
The Promised Land is a completely independent story about a girl who wakes up in a post-apocalyptic future where she has to figure out how to survive with the help of a pair of super-powered twins. Main characters are Eden, Caden (Blitz), and Shiloh (Boomer). I started this story in college and plan to get back to (re)writing it after I get through a bunch of the ISC writing. I have a lot of new ideas I’d like to implement and it’s overdue for attention. Most of the story content can be found here: https://tpleden.blogspot.com
The Promised Land blurb:
Ordinary American college sophomore, Eden Teknia’s world turns inside out when she suddenly finds herself in a post-apocalyptic future. In a land where biological warfare is the norm, Eden’s path to save her own skin follows a pair of gifted twins, a secret parcel, and a mysterious nomad. Living with the infected inhabitants gives Eden a new perspective when she faces the ultimate question: What really matters in the end?
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