What do I even want out of self-publishing? How big of a dream is “too big?”

I haven’t heard many indie authors talk about defining or measuring success, especially as the industry of publishing continues to evolve through the influence of social media. Indie author success seems mutable.

Pinning Down the Live Butterfly

Some indies in 2026 are launching into high-stakes careers thanks to a viral post, and some are still trying to figure out how to use Canva. Some are experiencing both at the same time.

Indie authors used to be the brow-raising guest at the party (not in a good way), and now millions of readers gather in online spaces to promote indie books, pushing discovery and raising demand for a more inclusive publishing landscape.

Indie authors used to be expected to switch gears from writing the book to running the business, and were given very little credit for doing both things fluidly. But somewhere in the last decade, that expectation shifted to include being social media content creators and community cultivators too. To being publishing powerhouses with a strong online presence that flexes marketing skills.

Considering the flux of the game, how is anyone supposed to know what to expect of their own business or abilities? And with so many varied examples of “success” how can anyone define it?

Defining what a successful indie author career might look like today is like trying to pin down a butterfly that’s still flying!

Still, the uncertainty bothered me as I stared at my blank journal page. I didn’t know what I wanted_, and worse, I didn’t know my options.

What opportunities exist—could anyone list them all out for me?

I’m a Virgo. I need lists!

What if I want to be the next Sarah J Maas?

What if I just want to be a local folklore?

Do I want prestige, popularity, a sky-rocketing follower count? Or do I want a small but loving cult that exists around my writing?

Is success attached to a salary range, and if so, what are its upper limits?

The more I tried to design my goals, the more ambiguous success started to feel.

I literally Googled “author goals” and “defining author success,” to help myself visualize the different versions of success authors find. I also reflected on some other authors’ careers, and still, couldn’t map what they’ve accomplished that I aspire to myself.

My whole attempt to figure out what I want revealed a glaring problem: I’ve never been shown what’s possible.

Sure, we see rising stars of indie authors, shooting across the digital sky, but there’s no map to follow them. Even if you observe their processes closely and try to emulate their methods—what you might end up with is, at best, someone else’s definition of success. At worst, another half-baked, misguided attempt at “building something.”

That’s not why I chose the Indie path.

I chose the Indie Author path to honor my authentic self, protect my intellectual property, self-determine my publishing schedule, exercise creative freedom (hello, unhinged book girlies—I write for you), and to become my own boss.

Examples of Indie Success that inspired my early career

If you’re an indie author trying to get a book out into the world today, you’re probably, like me, trudging down online avenues and waving your story around like a Newsie.

The world is a lot more welcoming to “bookish influencers” now (Thank you Sarah J Maas and BookTok), so more and more authors are throwing themselves into this niche to champion not only their own books but others they love.

When I published my debut novel in 2019, the term “indie author” still carried a little bit of taboo. I remember attending an international book event at that time, hoping to network with authors who’d “made it,” indie or trad (traditionally published). This event surprised me because most of the signing authors were independent and they had a massive audience of readers coming from all over the world to meet them in London, England.

I’d spent a handful of months prior to this event, army-crawling through online spaces, convinced all of us indies were just keeping our heads down too because the publishing world was once a battlefield that held little safety for indies. It was difficult finding other indies then because they just weren’t standing on the corners, chucking their books at people, shouting, “Get your indie books, here!”

Online spaces did not boast the indie presence then that it does today. So when I attended the event, a new world opened up. One in stark contrast to the online world of authorship. Stepping foot into that bookish convention felt like finding Diagon Alley. It was magical and all the wizards (indies) were welcoming!

The authors were generous, approachable, willing to teach and encourage. The readers were absolutely feral (myself included). This experience at the exact start of my indie authorship was so eye-opening. It dissolved the appearance that indies couldn’t be taken seriously, couldn’t be global, and couldn’t build empires.

I realized then that the online world had not caught up with the reading world.

The biggest problem I faced back then was forcing myself onto an online stage that still wanted to draw the curtains on indies. I had to nudge my way into whatever little dugouts of readers I could find on Facebook and Instagram. It was tedious work!

Through shared connections, I was blessed by the glorious and very generous Amelia Hutchins who allowed me to announce my debut to her established reading community, and that greatly helped me launch my book. She also personally accepted a copy of my book and was very encouraging.

Amelia Hutchins was one of my first examples of indie success and she held to the standard of authorship I aspired to. I wanted to foster a community as devoted and ravenous as hers, and I wanted to be a writer as prolific, disciplined, clear-eyed, and dedicated as her.

Then I was introduced to Karen Marie Moning’s books. She is a trad published author, but what’s interesting about her (besides the massive success of every glorious book she writes), is her steadfast value of her own authorship. She’s who inspired me to start an LLC and to treat self-publishing as a real business. She herself retains significant rights to her books and uses her own entity, Karen Marie Moning, LLC, to protect and control her intellectual property, even though she licenses her work to major traditional publishing houses.

At that magical RARE (Romance Author & Reader Events) book event, I met other author superstars like Callie Hart, Elle Kennedy, Devney Perry, C.M. Stunich, Rebecca Yarros, Sierra Simone, Ivy Asher, and T. L. Swan, who were all lovely and a few of them offered much-needed encouragement to me, a newbie-indie.

Growing Up Independent

After my debut and that book event in 2019, I had very little interaction with other successful indies. As a newbie, the author who I turned to the most with questions about publishing was Nyla K, who was amazing and generous and offered me lots of little treasures of knowledge.

But at some point I got so overwhelmed wearing the many hats of indie authorship, I stopped networking. And it showed in my sales.

Until TikTok in 2021.

Amber V. Nicole was one of the first indies I connected with on TikTok. I got to watch her books soar up international best-sellers lists and land on B&N shelves. I also got to witness indie authors like Brandi Elise Szeker, Stacey McEwan, H.D. Carlton, and others, be discovered, gain massive audiences, and even sign incredible publishing deals.

I myself amassed a global audience on TikTok, and sold nearly 7,000 copies of my two books in under a year thanks to the platform (still in shock).

So now, seven-ish years into my indie journey, I’ve seen what I thought was the peak of success at an international book event, experienced the low-low of authorpreneur burnout (multipl times), and even rode the upswing of viral, social media-driven book marketing.

But still! I hesitate to measure success on a popularity scale or on a visibility scale or even on a profitability scale.

I’m thinking… the best way to define and measure success is in layers.

My development as an indie author has coincided with two big shifts in indie-publishing:

1. Being indie has gone from obscure to cool, from taboo to virtue.

2. Being indie means being chronically online.

That being said, it’s almost impossible to detach the value of my work from the scope of my online presence because so much of an author’s appearing successful is determined by publishing success. Marketing is an interwoven component of publishing. So that’s why it seems like “success” hinges on visibility and therefore author goals should include prestige, popularity, discovery, etc.

The thing is… if you’re exhausted by having to be not just a writer, but also a social media guru, bookish influencer, email marketer, Canva wizard, Facebook group moderator, and still also work a full-time job, “success” hinging on visibility is like salt in the wound.

The other thing is… if you’re terrified by having to be not just a writer, but also to be an author who will (hopefully) have readers, you have to get over a fear of being perceived. Not just perceived as a human—but even when you fail. When you make mistakes. When you and your editor and all 86 of your beta readers miss a typo. When you have to cancel a book launch. When it takes you longer than expected to produc the next book. So “success” hinging on what sometimes feels like overexposure, can seem more painful that worthwhile.

Once you hit publish on any creative work, it becomes newsflash… PUBLIC. For all to judge! The great, the not-so-great, and the WTFs. All of it. It’s out there.

So when you enter publishing territory, there will be some legos you will step on in the dark. If you’re not prepared for them, if you’re not wearing shoes, those sharp little discouragements you’ll encounter will make it that much harder to keep a successful mindset.

And I don’t hear enough indie authors talking about what it means to be a successful PUBLISHER. Because I think lots of people conflate writing with publishing when examining an author’s success.

For example, “The book she wrote was so amazing and so well-loved by tens of thousands of readers all over the world, she got a publishing deal and now her book is becoming a movie.”

This example equates “writing” successfully with “publishing” successfully. What it misses is this:

“The books she writes are great. But she’s worked hard to get them into the hands of readers, attending multiple reader-centered events per year, engaging in online spaces daily, running a weekly newsletter, and posting consistently across multiple social media platforms. She’s ensured her books are available beyond Amazon, getting her books onto shelves in brick & mortar shops in multiple formats. She was picky when choosing her cover artist so her book designs are on trend and do some heavy-lifting of snagging reader attention. Her editing team is robust, but she still utilizes beta and ARC readers. She’s even in the process of producing audiobooks of her best-selling series with dual narration.”

This example more accurately captures what success entails.

The reason I emphasize this is because if you think “success” hinges solely on GREAT WRITING, you’re wrong. Success is contingent on resilience: Despite the legos you might step on barefooted. Despite the embarrassing mistakes, the clumsy mishaps, and the ugly misunderstandings.

The successful author continues to push, to labor beyond the birth of their book, toward the delivery of professional authorship through an oversaturated, hypercritical, digital-dependent industry, to the readers waiting on the other side.

WRITER VERSUS AUTHOR

Because online business-ownership is inevitable for indie authors, the indie author who desires to be successful must have two different sets of goals.

The Writing goals.

And the Publishing Goals.

Both sets of goals ought to include SHORT-TERM goals and LONG-TERM goals.

Now stop right here.

Listn. I am not writing this article to explain to you what your goals for your own author biz should be.

I am writing this article because:

• when I looked at my blank journal page and thought about my goals, I got overwhelmed.

• and then when I opened pinterest to try to make an author vision board, I got overwhelmed.

• and then when I picked up my phone and looked at other author success stories plastered all over my socials, I got overwhelmed.

• and then when I went to the bookstore and yearned to see my book baby on a shelf, I got overwhelmed.

• and then when I got an email from one of my FAVE authors of all time, announcing my pre-order of her next book was gonna come with swag (!!!) I got overwhelmed because I wanna cause this exact butterflies-in-the-belly level of excitement in my own readers one day and idk how to do that.

• and when I think about making yet another social media post or another substack article, instead of spending that time writing my fucking books, I get so overwhelmed I become dysfunctional and accomplish neither.

I wrote this article because the very act of DREAMING overwhelms me.

Because I don’t know what’s possible for me. I don’t know the options.

Is any dream too big?

Or am I not reaching high enough?

Am I letting fear keep me small?

Or is my desire to be the next George R.R. Martin edging on grandiose delusion?

Lol. You see the problem? Do you feel it too?

I started reading this book the other day— Successful Self-Publishing: How to self-publish and market your book. Fourth Edition. (Creative Business Books for Writers and Authors) by Joanna Penn.

In the (damn) introduction of this (wonderful) book, the author lists some common ways authors might define success. swipes open Kindle.

She gives these examples,

• It’s my life goal to write a book. I want to create something I’m proud of and hold my book in my hand and say, ‘I made this!’

• I want my book to change lives.

• I want an agent and a publisher to give me a book deal, so I have the validation of traditional publishing.

• I want to win a literary prize and receive critical acclaim

• I want to see my book on the shelves in my local bookstore

• I want to make enough money from my books that I can pay for a holiday every year for my famly

• I want to leave my job and make a fulltime living as an author

• I want to create a body of work that I’m proud of over my lifetime.

She then gives you some prompts for journaling about your long term and short term goals. Without reiterating her prompts [because you really should just read her book(s)], I challenge you to split your list of goals into two categories: Your goals as a writer and your goals an author. Make space for both parts of yourself.

The difference between being an author and being a writer is not whether you’re published. It’s whether you’ve accepted your own writing as worthy.

If you’re writing a book with the intention of having 0 readers, you’re an author. If you want 8,000,000,000 readers, you’re an author. If you’ve published a book and only your mom has read it, you’re still and author. If you’re an author who’s got 23,964 reviews on Amazon, and struggling to express your goals to yourself, you’re still an author.

Being an author is a state of mind—it’s about ownership.

So as you're taking ownership of your craft, claiming authorship, remember you own your definition of success too.

Set goals. Big and small. Set them and daydream about them and doodle them in the margins of notebooks and smash them. Because they’re yours. Claim them!

Your WRITING goals can include…

…the deeper reasons behind why and what you’re writing. They can be purpose driven. They can also be functional like word-count goals or writing deadlines. They can be emulation goals or education goals, like learning to write more like a favorite author or learning to write in a new genre. They can be writing for life or writing for now goals. Goals specific to one book or project, or goals for each season of your career. These goals might be creativity-centered. Think of these as the goals intrinsic to your craft.

Your AUTHOR goals, can include…

…anything beyond the writing desk. These are PUBLISHING goals. This can range from marketing-methods to production milestones, from a professional collaboration you’re craving to a salary figure or contract acquirement you’re chasing. These are the extrinsic goals, integral to sharing your story but not to creating the story.

And by the way

I have the answer to the scary question I voiced earlier: there’s really no such thing as dreaming “too big.”

Please also consider this—when you’re setting your author goals, be mindful how much comparison you’re doing. Nobody else can define what success means to you. Nobody else can determine what you’re capable of or limit your reach. You’re as capable as you prepare yourself to be.

Don’t rob yourself of the joy of making the journey by trying to pin someone else’s destination on your map.

Writing is a skill and so is publishing. Think of one as stretching and the other as weight-lifting. You should have goals to exercise yourself in both. Because flexibility can’t be achieved by lifting weights and strength can’t be achieved by only touching your toes. You have to work at conditioning both to be fit & healthy.

Set yourself up for success by being willing to exercise even when it hurts. Resilience is key.

When setting your writing and publishing goals for the short-term and the long-term, consider this:

1. Who you are.

2. Who you intend to become.

3. What you’re willing to endure or sacrifice to reach your goals.

A closing note on FEAR…

Fear is often the result of uncertainty. Overwhelm—or anxiety—is just a kind of fear. Over the years, I have found the most potent force that combats fear is GRATITUDE.

When I’m overwhelmed, when I’m burnt out or anxious, and when I’m in task paralysis or just drifting emotionally, I turn my sticky thinking into thankfulness.

I’m an indie author and I’m grateful that I have the ability to write.

I’m thankful I have a laptop to write on.

I’m thankful I have access to so many online platforms where I might meet readers.

I’m thankful to have sold even one book, let alone close to seven thousand.

I’m thankful for the readers who have stuck by me even when I stalled for four years between books two and three.

Etc.

Shift your thinking from what you’re scared to do, to what you’re grateful you get to do. Because you deserve to enjoy being an author. You do the hard parts of authorship because you deserve to experience the joy and fulfillment of living your creative purpose. And that carries a lot to be thankful for.

My name is Bre and I’ve independently published two dark fantasy romance novels over the last 8 years. Only two books in eight years.

I wouldn’t change anything about my process. It takes me time to develop my novels and my self alongside them. I’m not a get-rich-quick writer by any means. But as someone who’s been online, promoting my work since 2018, I have learned a lot about managing the pressure, impulses, and even repulsions that come with marketing books on social media.

The biggest, hardest lesson I’ve had to learn is to slow down.

Because even though it’s taken me nearly a decade to write only two novels, my mind has been running 84 million miles per minute with ideas to make myself go faster, earn more, and show up more brightly.

This has only worn me down, stalled my creativity, and hurt my process.

Yes, eight years is a long time. I’ve felt every inch of it. Slowing down seems like the opposite of what I should do. Because the representation of authorship and the creative lifestyle online is always in top gear. Beneath the noise, there is the truth: art takes time.

I am a system builder at my core.

If something isn’t working, isn’t efficient, or isn’t producing the results I want, I hammer myself against the scaffolding until something budges. Until something shifts.

For the past eight years, that’s meant banging my head on a wall because the “results” I’ve craved were faster production, more books, to be a more prolific writer, to replace my nursing career with a high-paying writing career, to find more readers, to drive multiple streams of income, and to do it all as immediately as possible.

This rapid-fire, anxious thinking has left me bruised. Finally, headaching, I’ve realized I am not a writing-sledgehammer. I am a scalpel.

It has taken eight years to get that through my head.

Which is strange to me because I am Thor’s hammer in most areas of my life. If the ball is on the court, I will pick it up. I will act on every idea and try to fill every gap until I’ve spread myself so thin, I can see through myself, into all my thinly veiled fears.

Fears of failure. Insufficiency. Incapacity. Worthlessness. Even mediocrity.

It’s hard not to rev at full throttle when the online world is constantly shoving fuel down your throat. People like me—the mental Mjolnir’s of the creative world—are especially susceptible to the poison of this fuel. The monetization, the dopamine of engagement, the breaking news of other creators’ successes. The wheels are ever turning and I have found myself, very often, breaking myself to keep up.

I’m a business minded person. I’ve been training myself to work this way since I first stepped foot on any online platform. Eager to learn, curious enough to analyze, and stubborn enough not to let go of whatever next thing might be my best-idea-yet. I’m a polymath. I love writing and language. I want to read a university’s worth of topics. I never shut up. I love design and marketing. I want to learn to foster community. I want, I want, I want. I obsess.

And I forget to slow down. Losing myself to the grind, the hustle, the glorified productivity models, the endless planners, courses, and strategies. My mind is constantly overstimulated.

It helps me to create exactly ZERO words on paper.

If that resonates, keep reading.

Ask me to generate a topic, write an article on it, transform that into media assets to share across multiple platforms, and in turn, turn it into a deliverable, a digital product or a physical product to sell, which then generates more media for marketing. I can do that. My brain zips down that pipeline in 3 seconds flat. I can see every idea down its product and media development scope if I have a minute to do so.

This is a super power in my career as a nurse. Especially in the administrative side of my career. I can whip numbers into stories, diagnoses into quality assurance studies, staff education gaps into trainings, and operational bottlenecks into proposals. I can see the zone of impact almost fully at first glance. I hear pain points in everything, and my mind works through differentials and solutions all the time. I crave impact. I love to see cause and effect, map patterns, tweeze out indicators, and measure performance. My brain pokes and prods at everything.

It’s a helpful thing when crafting worlds and characters too. But it’s also one big thinking trap when confronted by the rush and trills of social media and content marketing. To buffer this intensity, I’ve had to learn to work off checklists, set boundaries, and taper priorities.

The reason I’m sharing this is just in case there’s someone else here feeling similar pressures. Caught in an undertow that’s taking them away from the heart of their craft and the core purpose they’re even on social media to begin with.

If your number one goal is writing, goals two and three need to support goal one. Marketing the writing and finding readers has to come fourth.

My goals:

1. Write my book

2. Understand my story

3. Understand my reader

4. Find my reader

Goals 2 & 3 are meant to inform my process for accomplishing goal number 1. I need to understand the story I’m telling and who I’ll be telling it to/for. That helps me write it. In sequence, writing the book helps me better understand the story and the reader it best aligns with. These three goals can feed each other in nonlinear cycles.

Goal #4 is only related to goals 2 & 3.

he priority of writing comes first or maybe on its own designated days. If I’ve invested what I need to in the writing, I can work on the rest at another time.

When I can look for my reader, I use goals two and three to identify them.

• When I understand my story, I know what tropes, characterizations, aesthetics, and language to use to attract my reader.

• When I understand my reader, I know where—which online spaces and intersections—they go to and I can meet them there for meaningful engagement. I can add to those spaces by showcasing our aligned interests with thoughtful posts, offering them something valuable beyond books, and inviting them into my creative space.

This means when I show up online to find readers, I want to be somewhat specific. Intentional. I don’t want to waste time talking about the wrong thing. I don’t want to get lost.

I want to come forward with the clearest branding— voice & visuals—so my signal is magnetic to the people my brand is built to represent.

I want to click with people. So I have to know who the right people are to click with—meaning they’ll engage with me too. That kind of intention considers what kind of content my dream reading community is online to engage with.

TO MAKE THIS WAY SIMPLER

Here’s a straightforward plan, the one I use, for every the time I spend online. It’s what I do outside of writing time. It’s where I go when I’m driving in the marketing lane. ,

The map helps me cut through the social media work with clarity.

GET THE GUIDE HERE ← Feel free to screenshot, download to print, or upload to a digital journal.

This guide breaks down:

• Knowing which creative actions you value in online spaces and why.

• Knowing who you want to be as an author

• Who you’re showing up for—your readers

• Following a strong flow from post concept to post publishing

Subscribe now

I made this so you (and I) don’t get caught doomscrolling or draining the mental battery trying to absorb all of the everything that’s thrown at you in your feed.

In this post, I talked about about setting boundaries with marketing and even gave you free prompts for generating topics to build posts off of as a writer on social media.

Because I’ve done the looping and head-banging.

The goal should be, get online, make it work for you, get offline so you can write more.

Social media is a tool. Make it serve your process. Not the other way around.

If you liked this post or have thoughts to add, please comment and share!

Hi. I’m Bre and I am not a marketing expert. I am however, an indie author with two successful novels and about eight years of social media-driven publishing experience. And you are doing everything right, probably, but you’re missing one tiny tool in your tool box that could make things so much better.

I don’t dance around the hedges. What you’re missing is Pinterest.

Some of the most successful substack creator’s I’ve discovered all agree. Pinterest is the visual search engine most people ignore. It’s also what’s plugging money into their bank accounts.

If you’re trying to make money off a novel, you need to include Pinterest.

If you’re just trying to make money on Substack, you need to include Pinterest.

I don’t care where or how or why you’re trying to make money online. If you’re not including Pinterest, your coin bag is leaking.

Substack solves this problem for you with a CLICK.

After you publish a post, Substack will take you to this window where it offers you the ability to download media assets it created for you for your post. It offers links and quick access to popular platforms. It even offers to make your post into a video!!!

Let’s say you ignored this and left the window. Here’s how to get back.

Go to your dashboard.

Find the post and click on it.

It should bring up this window.

The three dots on the top right offer “SHARE ASSETS”

Click that and it will take you back to this media asset-creation/sharing page.

To make a video, Substack will convert whatever text you select from th article and turn it into a video for you.

It’s that easy. I tried this to see what it would make for my last post Why Writers Should set Boundaries with Marketing.

The AI voiceover reading the text is alright, and if you’re able, you could record a voiceover of the quote for the video which is awesome. This video could be used to share on Pinterest as well.

What to do with all this great stuff

Wonderful, we grabbed tons of great marketing assets, content for social media. While the auto-generated media Substack offers might not fit your grid on another platform the way you’d like it to, it will absolutely do perfectly fine on Pinterest.

You just download the asset, open Pinterest, hit CREATE PIN, and upload the media.

Assign the pin to a high-traffic board that fits a theme of the article content or make a dedicated board for your posts. I recommend saving multiple pins for the same article across a variety of boards.

If you’re brand new to Pinterest and don’t know how to set up boards or make pins, that is a topic for another article. But if you know the basics, this eliminates the guesswork and streamlines posting.

Why this matters

Pinterest is a visual search engine with a unique algorithm that circulates and recirculates content indefinitely. Unlike Instagram which may or may not show your content; or may reintroduce older posts one more time at some random point in the future.

Pinterest is made to resurface old content. It is evergreen. It can garner new impressions over and over from month to month. Traffic moves differently on Pinterest.

If you put your article media out there with a link to your Substack, it’s like putting out a sticky trap that never loses its tackiness.

Meaning, Pinterest will do the hard work of repeatedly showing your content to new viewers… forever (basically).

Pinterest is a valuable traffick-driving tool. It is the guy on the runway holding lights, guiding the planes to land on your Substack page. It’s happy to move traffic.

This is so important not to skip not just because Pinterest is great but because Substack makes it SO easy it’s a no-brainer. Substack hands you media of all shapes and sizes that can all be posted on Pinterest.

You should absolutely spend time on Notes and engaging with Substack users. But take Substack’s advice and “share everywhere.”

This should absolutely include Pinterest because most Pinterest users expect to click on articles and follow an outbound link.

Unlike Instagram, Tiktok, FaceBook, Threads, X, Youtube, and even Substack, Pinterest rewards creators for getting users to LEAVE the app/platform.

You want people to click your pins and follow the links—it counts as meaningful engagement. And the readers are there to do exactly that.

They’re not avoiding links.

They’re looking for either long-form content or shoppable content on Pinterest.

This makes Pinterest a wealthy bank of blog posts, articles, guides, and audience-deliverables. To ignore it is to walk away from a section of your potential audience and drop money on the floor. Pinterest rewards traffic driving and counts your ability to move traffic off of the app as a valuable activity.

If you learned something from this post, please leave a comment and give it a share.

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If you’re interested in learning more about Pinterest, please let me know. I am a Pinning Queen, and have been wildly in love with Pinterest for over a decade.

I’m so happy to share what I’ve learned from using the platform and just want to see others grow.

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If you spend even five minutes on substack you’re going to see someone here talking about content strategies for writers. Probably. I see these kinds of posts all the time. This post technically counts as one.

Usually these posts are written by someone with seemingly more experience than most writers think they have on the matter and are poised with declarations of authority like, “I’m turning my ten years of marketing experience into a quick-study series on substack,” or “I made these mistakes so you don’t have to.” Then they walk you through either a full curriculum or crash course on a subject and probably ask you to pay them at some point.

This kind of content is a good thing. The people providing this education are good people. They absolutely deserve to be paid for their skills.

But if you’re anything like me, you might see these posts and feel paralyzed. Intimidated. Or even made to feel stuck behind a curtain of self-doubt.

What we all want is to write.

The secondary desire is for our writing to be read by someone.

We can handle the writing—maybe not every day. But most days, we handle it (or it handles us). The finding readers bit is the part where we balk because it comes with talk of “content” and “strategies” and “marketing.”

The professionals and influencers and paid creatives insist it’s doable. Then our self-doubt insists we won’t be able to do it as well as we need to, according to how everyone else seems to be doing it. They make the money on it after all!

I think people who feel this way—myself included—need someone to stop speaking jargon at us, to hold our hands, and to say, chill, mija. I’d love that, personally. But social media isn’t about hand-holding, no matter how much people talk about community building. It’s mostly about leverage.

So keep in mind, it’s the kind, generous marketing professional’s literal job to make this work sound like a big deal because for them, it’s their profession. And they are leveraging their authority to make an income. Which is fabulous! But not always as writer-friendly as it’s poised to be. Because most influential creators are forgetting the fact that while marketing or content creation may be their expertise, their profession, it’s not the writer’s.

Your profession is to write. Not to be a marketing expert.

You are not expected to feel and speak about marketing or to perform marketing skills at the same level a marketing professional will. Relax. This skill is just a tool in your tool box, not the whole damn tool box.

The road an indie author or creative writer who wants to find readers travels, has multiple lanes.

Your main lane is the writing lane.

Yes, strive to become the best you can be in this lane. But no, you do not need to be an expert at marketing or networking or product development or design also.

You simply need to learn to switch lanes when possible. You become an expert navigator.

That means, you know when to look at your process as a writer or as a business owner. When to look at your story as a book or as a social media post.

It doesn’t mean you have to do the business side or the social media side perfectly. It just means you have to know when to do it.

This means having a road map. A plan.

You ought to be protecting the writer in you, first and foremost.

Not chopping up your writing time to turn it into content strategy time or learning to “hook” people. Those tasks are in their own lane. They don’t share the writing lane. Your ONLY other job as a writer is to know when to switch lanes.

If you need to write, prioritize your writing time. If you also need to post something online so readers can find what you write, make other time for this.

Do not try to do all of the things at once or you will blow a tire.

The marketing experts are getting paid to convince you to do more, to teach you how to do it better. This is wonderful and I am thankful for people like this.

But do not conflate the need to learn with the need to practice your own expertise. Because if you let the lack of knowledge compete with what you do know how to do, you’re going to start feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing, more often than you should.

So please, when you see someone online offering education on something you wish to learn, assign it a time and a place.

You can absolutely deep dive into the marketing rabbiting hole. Take every course you want to, read the articles, listen to the gurus. But do it after you’ve practiced your own craft.

There is a time and place for learning new skills. Ask yourself:

Do I have time and energy for this right now?

Can this wait?

Is there something else I need to prioritize right now?

Does engaging with this education distract me from what I know matters right now?

Am I procrastinating on writing by learning about publishing?

If the answer is no, run at the learning opportunity like the free-range chicken you are.

If the answer is yes, pause. Evaluate your boundaries. Protect the writer first and foremost.

Now that boundary has been established. When the time comes to switch lanes and learn something about the other facets of your business, you should be approaching the lane with calm awareness. It should be something you pursue because you can. Because the timing is right.

That’s what merging and switching lanes is all about—timing.

Big feelings can reemerge when we start doing something new. Like fear and doubt. Frustration. Even boredom sometimes.

This is where having a plan is really helpful. And one of those great things the professionals are all yelling about is having a content strategy.

The thing I want to share with you today is you know more than you think you do.

You have more to say than you realize!

And you don’t need to sound like anyone else when you finally let it out.

I wrote an article about why seeing everything as content instead of art is anti-creative and I stand by that. But the truth is, you don’t need to see everything as content to make a strategy. You don’t need to have your ear to the ground at all times, waiting to hear the right thing, to turn it into the best little post that’s going to get you tons of followers. You need to look at the lanes again.

You need boundaries! Some professionals call these “buckets” or “pillars.” Basically, this means you should categorize your content. But I’m going to make this even simpler for you.

When you’re driving in the writing lane, you should see the story.

When you’re driving in the marketing lane, it’s okay to view the writing lane from a different perspective.

But you should not be thinking about turning your writing day or routine or accomplishments into content while you’re inside the moment.

Protect those sacred moments of your process. Let them breathe.

When you’re outside of them, then reflect on them and share them if you want to.

Now, I’m not telling you what to do, but I’m whole-heartedly encouraging you not to let your marketing/social media brain filter your creative experiences through the content creation lens. Because it will burn you out, boo.

When you’re in the marketing lane, everything is fair game because this lane is all about sparking your own curiosity about your process and interests.

This is where you get to approach your creativity like an outsider if you want to. Approach your story like a reader instead of a writer. Approach the tropes of your genres like an psychologist.

Approach yourself and what you’re making with vibrant curiosity. Examine it. Make observations. And share those findings with people.

Sure, you can slip into the writer’s skin too and give a more cerebral perspective of your process and journey.

Honestly, you can do whatever the hell you like.

But try to get out of your own head when you’re coming up with things to post and share. Because inside your head there are already doubts and feelings and expectations.

Outside, in the marketing lane, you’re able to make more observations, be more generous with your time and attention, feel more curiosity about why you’re making what you’re making, and see yourself the way a follower or reader might see you.

What do they want to see more closely? It’s not your fears and doubts.

It’s what you know deeply about yourself and your craft.

This is where I’m going to make it super easy for you and give you a free cheat sheet of content prompts I’ve created for myself. Because you actually already know what you’re doing and I’m just here to remind you. These are prompts I use to help myself come up with things to share about my work.

GET THE PROMPTS HERE ← Feel free to screenshot, print, or upload this file in a digital notebook.

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Now that you have some prompts, plan your next lane switch. Make time for this that doesn’t take away from writing time.

When you’re in the content-making lane, go wild. These prompts might have multiple answers each. Answer as many questions about yourself as possible—you will surprise yourself. You can use these for substack notes or whole posts, and then cross-pollinate by sharing on IG, FB, Pinterest, TT, etc.

I use prompts and questions like this to plan content.

Ideally, I’ll sit down one day a week and answer questions about my own process, reflect on my own experiences, or explain my craft, current projects, or sometimes, other sides of my life to myself as someone outside looking in.

Even if I only come up with 2 posts, I keep them for when the time is right to post them. Once that task is done, I switch back into the writing lane.

I actually like making as many posts as I can and scheduling them so they automatically publish whenever I have the time. That takes the pressure off and lets me focus on the writing lane. But if I don’t get to do that, I make time to answer questions and post them. I’ll make a cute graphics/images on Canva for the post and share when I’m able.

That’s important. When it’s time, share.

Most content-creators out there are going to tell you to post on a schedule. I’ve been doing this for about seven years and I promise you there is no perfect schedule that you can stick to sustainably for years. Life moves us. No schedule that is static is the answer indefinitely. That’s why boundaries are important. When life moves, you have bumper guards for the non-negotiables–like writing.

THE TAKEAWAY

When people find you and your work, they have questions. The only real trick is giving yourself the appropriate time to anticipate the questions, indulging in the same curiosity, and sharing the answers about who you are, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. This all works to help you find readers who align with your work.

This is not hard. It’s the jargon being used online that made you think it was more complicated, more difficult, or required some new level of expertise to accomplish. And it might have even been a lack of boundaries that made you feel overwhelmed. But if you keep each task in its own lane, learn to navigate your own flow, and trust your eye to find the right perspective of your work, you will be swarming everyone’s feed with happy little content bees.

Curiosity is inexhaustible. It doesn’t need to be generated. It needs to simply be embraced, like hands taking a steering wheel.

Drive is what hits the gas and skill is what turns that wheel. You have all of that naturally. Stop letting important words and polished people trick you into forgetting this.

Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood Virgo.

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It was important to me to join my love of reading with my love of visual journaling and enhance my own journey through my reading goals. Most reading journals diminish the sensory experience or forget audiobook readers entirely.

Listening is reading.

This journal validates your style of reading, and highlights everything you value in your favorite books.

This journal comes with many different cover designs to fit a wide range of aesthetics. But it’s what’s on the inside that matters most. Each journal holds a consistent interior that works because it was created by a reader like you. The best part of the design is that it honors your creativity and unique style of capturing the soul of the story the way you hear it. No two people ever read the same book. That’s why the audiobook playlist page was included: this core detail provides ample space for incorporating visuals, for you to put your unique signature on, and show what each book stirs in your heart and mind.

The built-in, dateless/timeless planner with a tracker for January through December accounts for readers who read multiple books at once. The TBR log considers pre-orders and I reading status. And because most audiobook readers are listening to books on apps and devices, there is even a log for tracking your paid subscriptions and library borrows.

I hope you enjoy this tour of the journal and that you’ll check the collection on Amazon. Be sure to also look for the Library Reading Companion Journal—a new design crafted specifically for accompanying the library-lover on their reading journey in a sustainable and mindful way. Thank you!

I was thinking about my overly digitalized creative process. Thinking how I’ve started sifting my every thought through the “content creation” sieve. Realizing I wanted to take pictures and videos of my garden to turn them into potential social media content. To share and overshare.

Randomly, I considered Davinci studying the form of a bird and thinking to himself, “what if I had wings.” I thought of him emulating this curiosity in his inventions. Not for the sake of proving anything to anyone or seeking validation or even connection. For the simple sake of answering his own question. For an experience that could be explored and internalized.

Not just to be shared with anyone else.

I thought of J. R. R. Tolkien, knees in the dirt, hands untangling weeds from a garden bed, tilling his thoughts, and turning over loss like soil, sowing again with stories of triumph.

Then I thought of George R. R. Martin, his story stoppered as if in a bottle corked by expectation and judgment.

I wondered… when great minds looked at the natural world around them, did they think to themselves, “I ought to turn this into poetry, into invention,” for the sake of an audience or for the sake of their own soul?

When did I stop seeing my surroundings as art and start seeing them as content?

When did I stop feeling things for myself, experiencing the answers to my own questions, and telling no one what I’ve discovered except me; when did I start thinking how to influence, to impact, to inspire someone else first?

Why is it that every time I’ve ever journaled in my life, I’ve written through the filter of anxiety that someone, someday, when I’m gone, might read it. Turning my inner workings into a narration for another’s perspective instead an accounting of my own?

I married my soulmate two weeks ago. Everyone’s asking to see pictures. I’m excited and happy to share, but I have barely allowed myself to look at the photos myself since first viewing them with the photographer. Because I don’t want to look at them as something I owe to anyone. They are not an explanation—they’re my personal history. They’re not proof of anything. Their only purpose is to please me and my husband. We don’t owe any glimpse into our life. I don’t owe any view through my eyes, to anyone.

Social media has tricked and trained everyone into believing otherwise.

Behind the highly designed images and curated feeds. Beyond the normal posting behavior or the expectations of content creation at baseline.

Private thoughts have been exposed. There is a trend in oversharing the details of one’s inner world, daily life, natural behaviors. It’s positioned as lifestyle influencing and teaching. As if we need anyone to “teach” people how to have better private lives.

“How to Romanticize Your Life”

“Disappear for 6 Months and Come back Unrecognizable”

These kinds of exhibitions don’t help anyone exist. They teach you how to filter the mundane, minute details of your life through a photogenic lens. How to exist more cleanly, more aesthetic, more poseable. More presentable. How to curate and design and tailor your life so that you notice small frames of it that look like art—and then to prove you saw it by capturing the finer moments in a still or a reel. How to look at the immediate, fix it, refine it, and come back with something unrecognizable, something romantic and scroll-stopping, something newly made exquisite.

But come back where, to whom?

Why must we look at the mundane of our lives and work to convince ourselves and others to be fascinated by it? Why can’t the “boring” just be?

Why must we over-train the eye to find beauty? The human soul does not need to be taught to notice, to romanticize, to recognize and un-recognize what is art or isn’t. Constantly having a phone, an audience, a lens—tricks you into thinking you don’t know what to see.

And why would I want my life to be unrecognizable to everyone who thought they knew me or perceived my life before? Why do I need to zoom a camera lens over every facet of my life, as if I’m under constant surveillance in my own home or skin?

Because there’s a camera in my hands at all times?

That means the worst thing to happen to humans is not social media. It’s the mobile device. Social media was a natural next step after pocketing computers with cameras—it’s the human answer to a machine we can’t detach from anymore. Because we seek connection and meaning-making. To make meaning of the machine in our hands, we make content. We stop seeing the world as it is and start sharing it as we want others to see it—how we think it should be.

This is not the same as seeing the world and sketching it or turning into story or song. This is not the same as dancing under the moon. It’s about taking what used to be absorption and reverence and turning it into performance and engagement.

It turns moments into metrics.

I sat on my deck watching a bunch of bugs, listening to my dog breathe, feeling the ache in my own knees from crouching, and thought… this has meaning. It means something to me. I make the meaning of this moment inside of me—not outside of me. Not by telling anyone about it. By processing it, by letting it warm my skin and flood me with these realizations. It’s for nobody else but me and Eden, my dog.

Yet here I am, telling you about it. Trying to tell you how to be more private by posting about these quiet realizations online.

But I’m not posting it to get you to go do the same and come back to me or to a platform or an app to prove you did it or that I was right.

I’m telling myself as much as I’m telling you….

If you’re an artist, leave your phone in the house and go outside. See and hear and feel and tell absolutely no one. Connect with yourself. The next time you want to talk about something beautiful with someone, tell a loved one. Write a poem for nobody’s eyes and ears but yours. Draw it without sharing it. Write a story about it or a song. Dance to the moment, create the music for it. And force yourself to resist the urge to popularize it.

Art isn’t only for sharing. That’s a modern lie.

Do you know how many artists died before anyone ever made their work famous?

They didn’t always make art for appreciation.

Because art is all about expression. Not just about impression.

Do humans make art to share? Of course. But back when Davinci made boat shoes to walk on water, do you think his primary concern was with whether anyone was watching from the shoreline?

Or do you think he simply took each step to answer an internal question?

How much further can I go out? Could I cross the lake on foot? How carefully must I tread? Could I run?

When I noticed the direction of my thoughts this morning, I stopped looking at the flowers as potential photos, the insect flight patterns as videos. I wondered then, at the impact of planting a pollinators’ garden on the natural ecosystem of my backyard. That’s when I noticed the skink. Then the robin.

I stopped caring that the dill was leaning so far to the left it was bending over the snapdragons and wondered instead, what made it bow over? Do the bugs care—are the flowers of it more out of the wind and does that make the bees feel safer? Is the dill… comfortable like that—getting enough sun in that position?

Yes, I’m sharing the minute details, the whims, the curiosity of that moment. But I won’t be telling anything more than this because all that matters for me to share is that I noticed the wrongness of my mentality. I realized I probably have a technology-addiction. A social media addiction. A search engine addiction.

And I want to account for that on my platform. Because I want to change my behavior toward and dependence on “platforming” my art.

My creative process used to consist of loose-leaf paper, a blue pen, crayons, a typewriter, and copy paper.

I used to play video games and turn them off to go write. Play on the computer and walk away from it to go read or draw.

Now, the machine is an extension of me. I can’t sit down without picking it up or turning something on. I rarely walk around without carrying the buzzing little box that tricks me into feeling like it’s crayons, connection, or even income.

My creative process has become laptops and journals and apps and playlists and digital mood boards and software and search engine queries and tags and links. It’s digital and has filters and timers and layouts and fits an aesthetic rather than my needs.

It’s overburdened. Its curiosity is filtered.

What once used to be an open window in my mind now has a heavy curtain that makes it hard to see what matters or doesn’t.

To find an audience, authors and artists need social media. It’s true. But to create the art, we need to put the phone down—put it away. Log off. Power down. Extricate ourselves from the pressured, ever-present need to account for ourselves.

I need to stop seeing everything to capture and file in a content-bucket that was never supposed to be on the floor catching every dripping thought. Not every beautiful moment, every wonder, is something to be published, shared, restacked, discussed, liked, saved, chatted about, broadcasted, streamed, or uploaded.

Most things shouldn’t be.

Art isn’t made that way. “Content” is. And they are not the same thing.

My stories are crafted for Wild-Hearted Readers who crave stories of True Love bound by Myth, Power, and Madness. Where the villain gets the brat and she gets her way—even if she isn’t always careful with what she wishes for. I’m known best for the World of Aureum Series, an internationally best-selling series. Read more about it here.

I’m here to make friends with readers and writers who are down to discuss the gritty, gruesome, swoon-worthy and dirty side of the Dark Fantasy Romance genre. If that’s you, welcome!

WARNING: this article is intended for adults and relates to fiction. Topics discussed may be triggering to some. Dark themes can be enjoyed in literature, but this article does not serve to condone or endorse literary conventions off-page. Read at your own discretion. Some links are affiliate links.

DEFINING THE ROMANCE TROPE

The hunter/prey trope in dark romance features one character (the hunter) obsessively stalking, trapping, and pursuing another (the prey). Driven by dark, possessive, or instinctual urges, the hunter’s goal is to capture, claim, and dominate their love interest, blurring the lines between fear, adrenaline, and intense, primal passion. It falls under the category of “primal play” kinks, and is a popular dark romance convention where one character hunts another.

Because consent is dubious or nonexistent in this dynamic, this trope is considered taboo and is found frequently in DARK romantic fiction. When a book is tagged as DARK, it means it is host to tropes or taboos like this one.

FICTIONAL DEFINITIONS (may be different than off-page, real-life kink)

DUB CON: short for “dubious consent,” the term is used to tag fictional scenarios that sit between fully enthusiastic consent and outright non-consent (SA). A “dub-con” trigger warning indicates that a story contains sexual situations where consent is ambiguous, pressured, or falls into a moral gray area.

NON CON: short for “non-consensual,” the term is used to flag fictional scenarios that depict sexual assault/explicit rape, coercion, or non-consensual sexual activity.

CNC: Stands for “Consensual Non-Consent.” This is a consensual kink or BDSM dynamic where both partners agree beforehand and use safe words, clear boundaries, and aftercare.

Extreme Possessiveness & Stalking: Behavior that crosses into stalking, intense jealousy, monitoring, and an obsessive need by the captor to control the protagonist.

Primal Play: Often overlaps with CNC. The prey may resist or show fear and reject pursuit. Off page, in BDSM, primal play is pre-negotiated, consensual kink play. In fiction, consent is either not given, not implied, or coerced.

The Chase: The physical pursuit, where the prey flees through a secluded environment (like a dark forest or a locked compound) only to be eventually run down and overpowered.

The Claiming: The intense emotional or physical payoff that happens either immediately or delayed after capture, establishing a fierce, unbreakable bond of ownership. Sometimes, the hunter claims their prey and physically marks or changes them as dominated, owned, or overruled.

Emotional Manipulation & Gaslighting: The hunter frequently over powers the prey, either through physical force, psychological manipulation, or a combination of both.

Violence & Gore: Physical altercations, blood, hands-on control, restraints, trapping, compelling, or binding magic, tracking, stalking, hunting, and even weapons play a heavy role in establishing the dangerous atmosphere of the fictional story.

A TRUE hunter/prey ROMANCE will wrap up some or all of these conventions up with a …

HEA: Happily Ever After, an emotionally satisfying, optimistic ending where the main conflict is resolved, and the romantic leads end up happily together.

If you’re new to exploring the Dark Romance genre (and its subgenres like dark fantasy romance, etc.), you may be wondering How is This Romance!? Please read the first post in the dark romance trope series I’m publishing here I’m substack

WHAT MAKES A HUNTER ATTRACTIVE?

In hunter/prey romance there can be many variations of this trope:

• Paranormal/Supernatural: The “hunter” is an apex predator like a vampire, werewolf, or Fae, and the prey is their fated target.

• The Hero as the Villain: The pursuer is a morally grey antihero—often a mafia boss, cartel leader, or rival assassin—who hunts the protagonist due to a vendetta or obsession

• Reversed Roles: Occasionally, the dynamic flips, with the protagonist acting as the hunter pursuing the dangerous, brooding antihero to test their boundaries.

Readers of this genre broadly agree that this trope thrives on intense psychological tension, the power imbalance of the chase, and ultimate surrender to raw, animalistic— “primal” instincts.

For lovers of this trope, the idea of fascination, obsession, and relentless pursuit is exhilarating, delivering safe adrenaline rushes to the reader. There are no half-measures between the hunter and his prey. The attention is absolute and is usually total obsession coupled with extreme devotion.

The Hunter usually boasts primal energy, such as Alpha dominance and/or vicious predatory energy. Meaning he is ruthless, capable, and efficient in his pursuit of his prey. The expertise of the Hunter is a quality that usually both terrifies and excites the prey. He exudes power and control.

Because the hunter is the most dangerous entity in the room, the prey is completely safe from all external threats—except him or especially him.

THE THRILL OF SURRENDER

Because control is a central theme, dominance can only be complemented by submission. For readers who carry heavy mental loads or high anxiety in real life, the hunter offers a fantasy of submission. The hunter removes all choices and responsibilities, forcing a psychological release where the prey only has to exist and be consumed. And often, the hunter is the only one strong enough to crack the prey’s emotional walls and see their true, raw self.

THE TAMED MONSTER PARADOX

Before the romance is developed, a thrill comes from knowing the monster could destroy the prey, and the joy of this trope is that the hunter usually begins his hunt with the intention to destroy or exploit his prey. However, ultimately, he submits to his own feelings for the prey. Choosing to to cherish, worship, and keep her instead.

Once the hunter has betrayed his original reason for pursuit, choosing to honor his prey and their romance, she becomes his equal. The hunter shifts. He is a brutal monster to the rest of the world, but fiercely passionate, possessive, or even gentle and soft only with the prey.

WHAT MAKES THE PREY SUBMIT?

Usually, the FMC is the prey and fights tooth and nail not to give in to the hunter’s pursuit. He will either overpower and claim her, not letting her go, or she will continue to evade him until circumstances push her into his ownership.

Either way, once the hunter and prey are finally united, sparks fly. The core tension is resistance despite growing attraction. They may be morally, naturally, and/or socially at odds aside from the imbalanced power dynamic.

The prey may be physically weaker, smaller, more limited, or otherwise morally or psychologically different than the hunter which makes her the natural submissive to him. But she may also be a rival that nearly matches him in strength. Only once th dynamic shifts does she become his equal, despite any differences. They become complementary to each other.

The prey FMC may be an alpha submissive in her own right, or she may be the feminine Omega complement to the Alpha. Usually, the FMC/prey is not a Beta.

SURRENDER is a powerful act. There is power in SUBMISSION.

THE ILLUSION OF DANGER

Sometimes, even though the hunter pursue the prey for superficially dubious reasons, he maintains morally just, or personal intentions for his own chase beneath the surface. Meaning, he might be following an order to hunt, but internally, seeks the prey to assure her safety and she doesn’t know it so she thinks he’s hunting her only to hurt her in some way. It may later be revealed that his intentions were never actually dark.

DARK ROMANCE RECS WITH HUNTER/PREY on my TBR

INSATIABLE by Leigh Rivers- IF HE CAN'T HAVE HER, NO ONE ELSE CAN

ONCE YOUR MINE by Morgan Bridges - Murder brought us together. Only death can keep us apart.

DARK HUNTER by Logan Fox - his obsession is her addiction

GOD OF MALICE: A DARK COLLEGE ROMANCE by Rina Kent-a gripping dark romance about a villain and his irresistible new obsession.

HIDE AND SEEK: A dark stalker romance by Sheridan Anne- When darkness wants to claim you, do you run or do you step into the light, daring it to catch you?

VICIOUS SECRET by Morgan Bridges- A woman fights her dangerous attraction to the sexy assassin stalking her across campus, but he’s the only man who can save her from the secret society he serves.

LOVE CONQUERS ALL

I hope this offered some insight to those curious about the dark side of the genre.

If there’s anything to learn about the tropes of dark romance it’s this:

No matter how dark, devious, or even despicable the dynamic becomes, it ultimately resolves for the betterment of the characters.

Hope triumphs over fear.

Joy triumphs over grief.

LOVE triumphs over harm, hate, and hurt.

For people who have not experienced these victories in their real life (yet), reading dark romance might be the cathartic release they are looking for.

ALWAYS use your discretion and listen to yourself when it comes to engaging with triggering material. But know you hold the power of choice, to read or not to read.

If it’s not your thing, that’s okay too! Skip over it for something lighter. There is no wrong way to read.

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CURRENTLY READING:

HOUSE OF SKY AND BREATH by Sarah J Maas

TO BE READ:

CONFORM by Ariel Sullivan

Riftborne by Grenwich & Lennox

THE WOLF KING by Lauren Palphreyman

HALF CITY by Kate Golden

SOULS IN RUIN by Jacqueline White

IRON & EMBERS by Helen Scheuerer

THE ROAD OF BONES by Demi Winters

THE SILVERSMITH by L.J. Claren

FEATHERS SO VICIOUS by Liv Zander

EMPIRE OF FLAME & THORNS by Marion Blackwood

IF WE WERE VILLAINS by M. L. RIO

THE FAMILIAR by Leigh Bardugo

WHERE THE DARK STANDS STILL by A.B. Poranek

THE POISON DAUGHTER by Sheila Masterson

IN THE VEINS OF THE DROWNING by Kalie Cassidy

THE EVER KING by L. J. Andrews

ANATHEMA by Keri Lake

THE PRISON HEALER by Lynette Noni

WHAT MOVES THE DEAD by T. Kingfisher

SLEWFOOT by BROM

GRAVEYARD SHIFT by M. L. RIO

SHIELD OF SPARROWS by Devney Perry

THE WILL OF THE MANY by James Islington

THE SHADOW OF THE GODS by John Gwyn

THE LANGUAGE OF DRAGONS by S. F. Williamson

BLOOD OVER BRIGHTHAVEN by M. L. Wang

THE FAITHFUL AND THE FALLEN SERIES by John Gwyn

RED RISING TRILOGY by Pierce Brown

ON WINGS OF BLOOD by Briar Boleyn

PRE-ORDERS I’M WAITING FOR

DEAD BEAT by Leigh Bargudo

RUIN BOUND by Sable Sorensen

ACOTAR 6&7 by Sarah J Maas

My pinterest TBR Board

MY RECOMMENDATION- spoiler free

Dire Bound by Sable Sorenson

Official Blurb on Amazon:

Only the worthy survive the Bonding Trials. She’ll risk her life—and her heart—to be one of them.

Meryn Cooper has always hated the Bonded, elite warriors who form mental links with the massive, vicious direwolves they ride. While they live in luxury, Meryn struggles to keep her family out of poverty. When her little sister, Saela, is kidnapped—stolen across the border by the immortal monsters her country has spent centuries fighting—Meryn’s world falls apart.

Desperate to cross the front and save her sister, Meryn enlists in the army and is thrown into the deadly Bonding Trials, where any mistake will cost her life.

Now Meryn must survive four months of training at the castle. She is bound to a feral direwolf who refuses to communicate. The other trainees would love to spill her common blood. And her cold and beautiful instructor, Stark Therion, is eager to punish any weakness.

Everything is a competition, and everyone is out to get her—everyone except the dangerously handsome crown prince, whose attention adds another target to her back. In the castle, every smile hides a knife…and the halls hide dark secrets.

It’s bond or bleed. Duel or die. Failure is ruin.

Dire Bound contains mature content including depictions of graphic violence, and is therefore recommended for readers 17+. For a full list of tropes and TWs, please visit the author's website.

Perfect for fans of:

• Slow burn romance

• Found family

• Morally grey characters

• One bed

• Touch her and die

• Who did this to you

• Enemies to lovers

• Forced proximity

• Vampires vs. wolves!

(This author is on Substack! Follow for updates!)

I’d say this book is for readers who…:

• are Daenerys Targaryen loyalists - our Queen deserved better!

• are Stark-obsessed Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon fans

• say Wolves & Vampires have your millennial heart foreverrrrr

• are into psychic bonds but would like to see it done differently

• want something you can binge read that deserves the hype

• will appreciate that even if you don’t like the FMC at first, the WORLD BUILDING and story/plot are SO interesting on their own you will immediately be interested and keep going just to immerse yourself

• love when an FMC can both piss you off and earn your respect

• like complicated relationships of all kinds, not just the romance subplot

• got a thing for, “if you touch my sister, I’ll fucking gut you.”

• got a thing for “is this enemies to lovers or lovers to enemies or enemies to rivals or friends or what the fuck is this?!”

• want more side characters with main character energy who you’d want as friends IRL.

• want to be utterly shocked, disgusted, enraged, and also beaming with pride, exhilarated, yearning for more.

• want lots of scowling, growling, glowering, and raging—from both the MMC and the FMC

• hear WOLVES and instantly add to cart. Pack mentality is real and amazing!

• want to find BONDS you’d die for. Or kill for. Or make other morally ambiguous decisions for

• crave plot so twisted it’s more of a SPIRAL-OUT-OF-CONTROL than a twist (but it is controlled because the author is awesome

• want to feel the way they did when they read ACOTAR but without having to read more than ONE book to get (almost) all the feelings. And just when you think you’ve scratched that itch, the ending happens and you’re like wtf… is this a new experience I haven’t gotten from a book rec in a while!?

• want a writing style that isn’t stuffy or pretentious but it’s still an epic fantasy so while some of the language leans more casual/modern-ish, the book is fully, seriously built as a true adventure fantasy

• can hold out for an ending that will quite literally have you questioning it all because it’s so fucking crazy and things you NEVER see coming happen and what you think you see coming, you don’t even truly grasp until you’ve finished and are staring at a wall which is crazy fun

• want cliff-hanger but the next book is already out!

MY PINTEREST BOARD FOR THE WOLVES OF RUIN TRILOGY

MY REVIEW — SPOILERS START HERE

This book was recommended to me by my big sister which I love on its own because the theme of sisterhood is so central to the plot. That being said…

Dire Bound took me a while to get into. Twenty-three fucking chapters to be exact. If Meryn hadn’t been such an obtuse asshole in the beginning, I think I would have rate this five stars. Even after finishing the book I’m not entirely sure the severe degree of her stubborn ignorance in the beginning was entirely necessary.

HOWEVER, I say this with only a speck of irritation and actually wish I could give this book five stars. Because Meryn’s character does develop which I respect and appreciate. But it took SO fucking long for her to make the ONE GODDAMN choice that could have made me fall for her just a teensy bit sooner.

The two things that kept me hanging on for twenty-three chapters was my sister’s insistance that the end is wild (it is), and the worldbuilding and storytelling aside of Meryn’s character.

Meryn Cooper- the FMC

So… I love her. But she made me want to tear my hair out. Maybe it was my author brain, and I can understand a well-done character arc, but her character felt a little over-engineered.

Meryn is a trained pit fighter from the slums at the hem of a lavish kingdom. Her character is steeped in resentment and wrath at “the way of the world.” She fights to earn money to afford medicine for her mentally-ill(?) mother and provide for her little sister.

She grows up in a rough, urban environment, therefore is a product of that. Her city is plagued by a band of mysterious kidnappers who keep stealing children and getting away with it because her people essentially are ignored or are in the blindspot of the kingdom.

None of this bothered me. I appreciated the thorough origins of this character. What did bother me was the cookie-cutter “I’m an angry girl because I’m poor and the world is unfair,” mentality that Meryn had in the beginning. She doesn’t ever really outgrow this witty one-liner heavy perspective on classism and economics. It just kind of softens at the edges of her as the book goes on, because he focus shifts. She does have moments where she snaps back to this and remembers to be outraged about the imbalanced societal dynamics, but honestly I rolled my eyes around my head a few times because a lot of her inner monologue felt performative. It felt like her robin-hood streak was being shoved down my throat.

I’m sorry, but I’m a long-time fantasy reader. I don’t need a reintroduction to the big feelings that come with being on the neglected side of a people group in a power-imbalanced world. That is like the bread and cheese of fantasy worlds. So when it’s constantly reiterated and I’m forcefully reminded that this character really hates being poor and underprivileged, I’m just like … okay I get it already.

What earns back some points here is that Meryn’s character doesn’t just tell us she is a poor unfortunate soul with an unwillingness to yield to circumstances, she shows us repeatedly. Her inexperience with the finer side of things is evident in the way she bumbles through the new luxurious life afforded to her by surviving the bonding trials. She has to repeatedly remind her friends who were raised in priviledge that she quite literally has no effing clue what they’re talking about half the time. That veiled understanding feels more authentic and lived in and I think would have been sufficient with a couple ireful disclosures of her true feelings about her upbringing. Not every emotion needed to be broadcasted in a cheesy, slogan type of way.

What really brought this to a head for me was when Meryn was chosen by the most regal, most badass, most unique wolf ever and she rejects the bond.

A twist on fated bonds and rejected bonds

I loved that this part of the story explored a bond damaged by resentment and rejection. I loved that Meryn resisted the bonded life. I loved that Anassa forced the bond of Meryn’s dumbass anyway.

What I hated and what had me white-knuckled holding on to a tiny shred of willinginess to keep reading was Meryn’s stupidity about it.

And I mean that literally.

Sure, she could resist the luxe bonded life because she’s a jagged girl who doesn’t know how to accept this new life after living in a the sand-paper environment that’s buzzed her down to a well-whittled weapon of a girl.

But like… she’s on a rescue mission to save her sister who’s been kidnapped by the Nabbers and not even ONCE does she stop and think “is there some kind of way I could use this uber cool, uber rare magical bond to a mythical BEAST to save my sister?” THIS DOES NOT CROSS HER MIND UNTIL CHAPTER 23.

This would have been FIVE fucking stars if at some point sooner Meryn was like

“The part of me that’s been trained to seek advantages in the fighting ring wonders whether I could use this bond to aid me in finding Selah, but I can’t allow myself to think Anassa will help me. She’s been a selfish bitch ever since she forced this bond on me and I can’t pin all my plans on the hope that she’ll follow my lead. She wouldn’t even go down the mountain with me, let alone across enemy lines to find my sister. ” -what I HOPED Meryn would have thought just once, not an actual quote from book.

But no.

She’s too hardcore for that. She’s not like these desperate, greedy raw-bonds. She’s not like other girls. Why would she ever want the ultimate power—the ONLY power that can actually help her save her sister? She’s too angry for thoughts!

Bro. You’re telling me this woman is so hard, so big and bad (literally), so slick they call her the “alley cat,” and it takes her like 2-4 MONTHS after bonding with the most special wolf of all time, for her to consider even for a second that this might be the one thing she needs?!

It’s like the “harsh streak,” the “voice of the oppressed” is so loud, it drowns out the voice of reason when it really shouldn’t.

Someone who has truly lived in extreme poverty, who’s been underserved their entire life, who’s had to claw for everything they have, wouldn’t only be angry they were disadvantaged. They’d know how to find the edge, twist and turn things to their own advantage, to find the one way through survival. And for someone who talks about being a survivor all the time, she doesn’t acknowledge it once. This was so unrealistic for me it almost ruined the book.

It felt like we were trying to tick a character-profile box so badly we sacrificed understanding for a trope or a series of quote-worthy one-liners. It cheapened Meryn’s true internal rebellion for me.

But boy am I glad I held on…

Because the MINUTE Meryn FINALLY SAID THE WORDS… I was screaming at my phone (listening on Audible). I was like.

“FINALLY YOU STUPID BITCH. YOU FINALLY FUCKING GET IT.”

Lol. Sigh.

I was cussing this FMC out so bad. And now I would bow and pledge my fealty to her.

I’m not saying I needed Meryn to fully realize what she had with Anassa sooner. I wanted her to consider it and reject it sooner. Then revisit the thought later and shed her doubts, the lies, her disbelief and accept it when she did. It was just the simple fact that the thought never even cross her mind before that moment, that really irked me. She could have considered it for a second and squashed the thought with her badassery or whatever.

So when she finally had her DUH epiphany of, “oh my gosh, I might actually need my uber special wolf to accomplish the one goal I’ve been ripping myself to shreds trying to accomplish on my own,” I was like screaming through my tears of joy, of course you dummy.

And I cried and giggled like a little bitch.

Everything after that, I was FULLY behind Meryn. Cheering for her. Laughing with her. Raging with her. We finally bonded lol.

Part of me was like… Miss Sorenson, was that the point? Did you want me to reject Meryn the way she was rejecting Anassa? Because if that was the intention, it WORKED. I just didn’t enjoy it lol it made me almost DNF the book like 2-3 times. My eyes had visited the back of my skull so many times… but the story itself was still in my brain and even when I tried to look away, I couldn’t. Not because of Meryn… because of Anassa. When Meryn finally accepted her, I felt like I was breaking through a nightmare—the kind that makes you feel like no matter how hard you pump your legs, you can’t get where you want to go—and I was running full force to that Queen Wolf. Maybe that was the point. Maybe that’s why Meryn was written the way she was. But that tiny fault really got under my skin and almost ruined my reading experience. The half-star deduction for this book was because even though the rest of the book redeemed itself, I couldn’t shake that irritation from my overall feelings about the book. So 4.5 stars—well deserved and really should have been 5.

Stark Therion - the Enemy

Oh, Stark. You’re so mean. lol. I love it!

more thoughts to come, review in progress….

Lee/Killian - the Lover

I hate this fucker. I hated him from his first moment on page. The longer and longer this relationship went on and on, I was like what. the. fuck. is. happening. Meryn. I. Swear. To. GODDESS. if. you. marry. him. I. will. throw. this. book.

But the plot twist.

Oh, it was twisty, sister.

It was soooooo good.

Okay confession—I skipped literally EVERY single sex scene in this book. lol I had ZERO interest in her relationship with Killian/Lee/Fuckface. I was more excited about Stark licking her neck twice than any single moment of heat between these two. It was just YUCK for the whole book because I did not trust him. It felt… rapey? the whole time lol Even though she was consenting, he was SO creepy to me I just could not. And I am a DARK romance girly. I’ve never felt this way about a red-flag relationship. but I was like… Is this Tamlin in another mask?!? No thanks.

I hate Killian. And I love to hate him. The hatred is so real and visceral that when the relationship inevitably EXPLODES, I was like holy shit….

This is such an amazing lovers to enemies arc. AMAZING.

SELAH COOPER

My bebe

more thoughts to come, review in progress….

ANASSA

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

My favorite character in these books

more thoughts to come, review in progress….

You’ve probably stopped looking at reviews as a reason to buy a book.

And you’ve probably gone into more books somewhat or entirely blind based solely off a short list or a brief explanation of buzzwords, like tropes and insta-buy items, highlighted for you by another reader.

Think about it. Honestly.

The answer is probably this: You find most of your books based on the words from the mouth of another reader you trust. You might still find books based on their blurbs, the book doing the self-selling by its description on the cover. But mostly, you look for books other people are raving about and buy them if a person can convince you to.

I’ve noticed a trend in the past five years. In the years since BookTok exploded into popularity and shook up previously-quiet online book review spaces, I’ve noticed that one type of content pulls itself away from the standard reviews and star-rated systems that once dominated online, highly curated and some-what social reading culture.

Book recommendations seem to be outpacing book reviews.

As I reader, I find myself tearing my attention away from lengthy reviews toward highly curated TBR lists and ravenous-reader recommendations.

Because honestly, I don’t care why anyone hated a book or for their criticism. I don’t want to be pulled down before I’ve even gotten to read the book. If I read it and end up feeling that way, I might look for reviews that validate or challenge my feelings, but I don’t want to see that before reading the book.

I’m seeking an experience for myself, not someone else’s elaborate opinion of a book, that will pull me up and over the moon.

I want to feel that infectious obsession a reader has. I want to experience the love of the book. I want a cheat-sheet to the book that gets me just beyond the cover and into the story in a way that softens the ‘buy’ button.

I don’t need the purchase justified or dissuaded by an overgrown thought I can’t access or appreciate before reading the book.

I just want to see how that book might make me feel, reflected in another reader.

That means, I find that my eyes being drawn toward recommendations and away from reviews when it comes to book discovery.

I’m not looking for a review to convince me to read a book. I’m looking for the recommendation.

And after I read the book, then I digest it in my own review which I hope can spark discussion with others who also experienced it.

It seems to me that recommendations are for discovery and reviews are for digestion.

Nobody is recommending books they hate. They’re recommending experiences that shook them, thrilled them, enraptured them.

That enthusiasm skyrockets book sales for authors. It turns the page for a prospective reader without them having to lift a finger past the cover of the book.

Someone else holds up the book and says, “you have to read this if you want to experience…”

It’s gripping because it’s personal.

That’s a big shift away from “I liked or disliked this book because…”

So be honest. Do you buy more books based off of…

• someone’s recommendation of it (short, interest-tailored, enthusiasim-driven),

• off a review (lengthy opinion/digestion of a book),

• or based of its blurb alone? I want to hear your answer in the comments!

What’s the Difference?

Some people might be looking at recs and reviews and ratings as all the same thing. They are not the same thing.

Book Recommendations:

Recommendations are endorsements. Meaning the purpose of the rec is to make a match between a book and its next reader. It’s a suggestion that signals the reader’s identity and interests. Recommendations are helpful if you’re looking for rapid-fire suggestions that move you from one book to the next, to get you out of slumps or onto the track of an unbroken reading experience. They tend to be light and punchy and are meant to keep you on pace, in the right place, with a book in your face.

Book Reviews:

Reviews are analyses that evaluate the strengths and weaknesses, thematic depth, and style of a book. Reviews look at merits or the lack thereof and divulge personal experiences. They gauge whether the book is worth the time it takes to read it, filtering out books that don’t meet certain standards. Reviews are helpful for indecision, to sate deeper curiosity about the content of the book, but often, are a heavier influence that are made to be pondered.

Vibe and Quality are not mutually exclusive

A recommendation can assess quality along with the general vibes of the book, but the quality is usually being positively portrayed.

Reviews tend to function on a spectrum, highlighting a lack of quality as often as it does the merit. Likewise, some “reviews” can be short, sweet, and to the point, emphasizing reader-to-reader feedback more or less than personal experience.

Authority and Over-saturation around Reviews

I love writing book reviews. They are vital to the reading ecosystem and should never be discredited or pushed away entirely. Even though I still write them as a reader, I don’t value them as deeply as a book-buyer.

Reviews have a special place and time for me, and it’s not in the check-out line.

Writing a book review is like journaling my reading experience. Still, I don’t look for other readers’ reviews as often anymore when I’m shopping for a book, because I don’t want their layered experience to skew what I’m seeking. Not when it comes to discovering a new book. I save that more nuanced, emotional, layered, detailed review for after the read.

When I’m done and savoring the book (or seething about it which is very, very rare), I look for reviews to help me better process my experience. I seek digestion and discussion. The money has already been spent. The book has been read.

Now I’m bringing my notes to my reading community and looking for connection and conversation. It’s not what got me through the door—it’s what I found on the other side of the threshold.

Book reviews used to get me to cross the fence and buy a book, but now, in a book market that over-exposes some niche books to wide varieties of readers—even readers who aren’t the target audience of a book, they don’t.

Because let’s be honest. Not everyone is an unhinged, red-flag-charging, dark-romance girly. And that’s okay!

But let’s explore this example for a second: readers who never liked dark romance are now reading dark romances they wouldn’t have before TikTok, because of popularity and viral marketing. Some people end up trashing the books in the reviews because they don’t like dark romances at baseline. This is common and I’m afraid it skews the audience perspective for me by interjecting a different quality of review.

It’s like social-media-driven, over-exposure is gaining readers that aren’t the target. Which is why I don’t look at reviews before purchasing. Because I don’t know if the reviews were written by people who understand what I’m looking for.

Recommendations both help and hurt this. Excitement generates curiosity. Curiosity converts browsers to buyers. There isn’t always a filter because sometimes, the interest is in the hype, not the content of the book.

So, a “misaligned” reader buys a book and ends up feeling mislead or disappointed and thrashes a book that wasn’t truly their preferred taste simply because they got caught up in the influence of a recommendation. Which is fine.

But it makes me distrust reviews, as a buyer, more. Because someone who hates captor-captive romances is not the reader whose opinion can convince me to buy or not to buy a book because I love captor romances.

This is why I stick closely to readers, online and offline, who clearly align themselves with the types of books I love. If I need a more detailed review to pull me off the fence, I’ll go to them instead of the general reviews under a book.

Which means, that on the flip side, recommendations themselves are crucial to me because I now know that someone who loves the exact kind of book I’m into, is actually doing the filtering for me. They are only recommending the book because they liked or loved it. There’s less guesswork, a lower barrier to entry. Which reintroduces a sense of readership-authority in a saturated reading space.

Now that being said, there is nothing wrong with people discovering books outside their previously-defined interests or comfort zones. Someone who has hated dark romances previously might actually find some they enjoy and it changes their perspective of the niche genre! Which is awesome!

That is the beautiful thing about online book communities.

There’s no wrong way to read.

But for me, the volatility of reviews can’t compete with the directness of recommendations.

Five Stars, Six Stars, Infinity, and Beyond

How do you rate books? I typically use the standard 5-star ranking system, but my star ratings are assigned on a case-by-case, or book-by-book, basis.

Meaning, any book has the potential to be 5 stars. The book can only come down in ranking because I’m starting from a recommendation which means I’m rating the book from the top down.

So, yes. Everything is 5 stars until it deducts points from itself so to speak.

For me, two books can be five stars for completely different reasons. I don’t apply the same set standards to every book. I try to flex my ratings according to what that book individually deserves. All books have the potential to be five and can lose points based on a myriad of subjective reasons.

I don’t typically rate or review or recommend books I don’t enjoy—especially if I don’t finish them. Because what’s the point? I’m not here to trash books. I’m here for a good time.

Infinity star reads for me check all my personal boxes and make me feel happy to be alive. They usually wrench every emotion from me, from horror to wonder. They probably made me cry as many times as they made me laugh. They give me the full throttle experience. And I’ll remember them forever. They feel like they were written for me.

I also can change my ratings based on how pervasively the book gets into my head. If I can’t stop thinking about a book long after I’ve read it, it’s probably a higher rating than I previously assigned it. This could make it a six star read for me. If it transcends my initial scoring system—breaking my tidy thoughts open and swirling through me indefinitely. It might not have checked every box like an infinity star book, but it did something to me.

That being said, I love posting reviews (with full spoilers), writing them perpetually as I read a book and updating the post. I like posting a flurry of short recs too! I love watching recs and I love talking to people about my favorite books even more than I love writing about them.

Reader vs Author Approach

So far, I’ve written this article entirely from my perspective as a book-consumer, not a producer.

As a book-shopper, I want recs recs recs. As a reader, I want to share share share.

As an author, I think all of this is vital. Recs, reviews, stars, blurbs. These are the words in a language of readership that all mean very important things.

Raving and ranking and sharing are all the lifeblood of our community. Viral recommendations and quiet, sneaky, sensations that have people spilling their guts in long, artfully crafted critiques.

There is no wrong way to share one’s love of books.

It’s interesting to see the bite-sized recs doing more heavy lifting than the reviews at this point in time, from a marketing perspective.

From the “if this, then that,” to aesthetic and trope match-making. I think the industry is still learning how to harness the high-impact energy of fast-paced recommendations.

A review rolls out a banquet of ideas and opinions while recommendations roll out a feast of options. A review stamps a book. A rec stamps a TBR card.

I also think some aspects of this are tricky, leading authors into trope-traps or cookie-cutter hole-punchers that can cut out ingenuity and plug in scalability.

But honestly? If it gets more books written and read? I’m not complaining.

Copy and paste aesthetics are going to happen. Depth will shift. The industry will adapt. Readers will drive this change and some writers will jerk the wheel to the left or the right, veering the whole market onto a new course.

The way readers share books will likely change again and the way author’s shape their craft to ride the wave of tidal marketing will also change again.

There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s a cyclical ebb and flow, the sign of life-forcing pulsing and whooshing through a living, growing community.

I’m excited to see more readers engaging with each other, with authors, and with books. Because beyond what’s good for book sales, the most important thing is what’s good for our communities, our shared readership, and for the artistry of all book lovers.

What do you think? Do you still lean on reviews or do you find yourself seeking recs more? How do you rate books? Comment below!

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BLURB: A Kingdom of Men is pushing the Elven clans of the Sunderlands over the brink of extinction. The mortal counterpart to the God of Death, Keres has the power to stem the tide of bloodshed. As brutal civil war threatens to tear her homeland asunder, she struggles to control her gift without succumbing to a curse of unslakable blood-lust. When her people are attacked, she can no longer hold back. The beast within awakens. Gods know there will be no redemption on the other side of her revenge. Wading deeper into the darkness plaguing her land, unraveling the secrets of her heritage, Keres faces a greater challenge: finding her place in this world or being broken by it. Many seek to tame her and use her as a divine weapon. Including a Knight desiring to claim her body and spirit. As the war between Man and Elf stains the Sunderlands with innocent blood, Keres must make a choice: save her people and damn her cursed soul, or forsake the Gods and her homeland to gain freedom. (Originally published under pen name, Anastasia King)

THE WORLD OF AUREUM LANDING PAGE

Note: This story is not suitable for persons under the age of 18.

When we’ve run far enough to be out of the immediate reach of human hands, Indiro realizes I’ve been directing our escape toward the domain of the witch. Or so he calls her.

To me, she’s just my aunt.

“What happened back there, are you all right?” I ask, although I know very well what happened. By the look of him, Indiro probably doesn’t remember much of it.

“I’m fine, lass,” Indiro says and catches his breath.

He unbuckles his sword belt and leans on the hilt like it’s a walking stick. Blood streams down from his leg, painting a red streak across the top of his bare, hairy foot, and red rivulets trickle from his brow. He rolls up his trousers to reveal a gash.

“That’s not too bad. Not worse than you’ve suffered before. Happily, the blood on your armor smells like someone else’s.”

He shoots a glare at me. “Don’t ye be sniffin’ my scent, little witch. I don’t remember a thing after one of the bastards knocked me unconscious.”

He touches the cut to his brow gingerly and flinches. “But then you….”

Images flash across my mind like blood spraying across low hanging tree branches.

I can’t—

Doubled over, hands braced on my knees, I empty my stomach onto the ground. There’s not much left in me to offer. I haven’t eaten in the last two days.

A tremor takes hold of every muscle, and my legs buckle. I drop onto all fours and try to stop the world from spinning by locking eyes with a startled frog hiding beneath the cap of a poisonous mushroom Baoreans often mistake for food. The grey spotted frog blinks at me, uncertain of what to make of me.

“Lass?” Indiro asks, concern stitching his thick brows closer together. He’s saying something, but his words don’t find a foothold in my reeling mind. His lips move but his voice is replaced by the soldier who snarled, “you should have killed me.”

A stabbing pain gnaws at the underside of my sternum, and a dull ache wells in my throat.

“We should have slain them all. Survivors can follow,” the Death Spirit grumbles inside me.

“You’re no better than them, beast.” The second voice belongs to me.

Two spirits, one mortal and one belonging to Death. Or myself, just changed by the Dark God? I don’t truly know how the divinity in my spirit melds with my mortal nature. I was a terrified child when Death placed a seed of power on my tongue. I gulped it down, desperate to survive. Then I woke, alive again. Half myself, half his. A voice called my name from inside, a second spirit awakening, sharing my bones, and eager to stretch its jaws. That is all I’ve understood since—its hunger.

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I’ve noticed something interesting. This might just be me being new to Substack as an indie author, but it seems like every time I post an article my Substack feed adjusts to reflect the type of content I’ve posted, showing me more articles like my most recent one. Pushing me closer to other content neighborhoods that are similar to that post. It’s got me asking myself: do I want to grow a creator readership community or a fiction readership community?

I want both! But how do I do that without confusing the algorithm?

Because I’ve also noticed a difference in the levels of engagement across different types of posts. Which shows me that my audience is mixed—and that’s a sign my algo might also be confused. It’s like everytime I post, the algo is asking itself who I’m writing for and then scrambling my content to different groups.

1. Readers of my stories

2. Indie authors/writers interested in my publishing experiences

3. People interested in creativity and storytelling inspiration

4. Readers who like reviews and recommendations

5. Writers interested in community building and want to lift each other up

These circles overlap and aren’t exclusive, but they’re not identical either.

Someone who liked my post about how I’m finding readers in 2026 after a long hiatus from social media, might not care to read my serial stories. While someone who loves my stories might never comment on my publishing insight.

ADDRESSING THE ALGORITHM

If I look at this from an algorithm optimization and SEO standpoint, it’s way, way more straightforward to optimize a nonfictional post than a fictional one. And the important thing to remember is that each post is searchable on the internet, off of substack. So if someone googled my serial, everything I write should make sense for people browsing.

A post called:

5 Places Indie Authors Actually Find Readers

can be understood in three seconds—especially by the algo. And algorithms tend to reward low-friction engagement. And engagement reinforces what the algo shows to me!

It seems like personal essays, behind-the-scenes content, and writing discussions outperform fiction.

What I take from that is that I think I need to optimize my fiction posts so that they don’t fall into the algorithms blind spots. Tags alone don’t seem to be working, so I might need to find a way to layer in some keywords at the beginning or end of my fiction posts.

Right now, my recent posts seem to be attracting other authors (which is awesome because I love being around other authors) and publishing-curious readers (which is also awesome). But I need to boost traction on my actual fiction and the stats are showing those posts don’t get opened as often. Hmmm.

TESTING SOLUTION #1

DIFFERENT CONTENT

I can experiment with my guess by trying different content such as

• Fantasy worldbuilding posts

• Character essays

• Mythology and folklore posts

• Genre analysis posts

• Reader-focused fantasy content

• Excerpts tied to discussion questions

All of these are outside my strictly nonfictional content.

If the feed shifts accordingly, I’ll have evidence that Substack is indeed building a profile of my content themes and adjusting recommendations around them.

I can use this information to help shape my expectations around what kind of engagement a certain type of post will get. Not to say I should or shouldn’t write something for the sake of engagement, but so I can temper my expectations, and not take it too personally if one post outperforms another. To reduce my internal friction and frustration.

UNDERSTANDING READER BEHAVIOR

Other questions I have are if a reader sees a post in their feed that is titled—

“Chapter 12: Blah Blah Title Blah”

Do they then feel like there’s too much of a barrier to click that?

Do they just… scroll past it because that title means nothing to any new eyes on my story?

They don’t know the story. “Chapter 12” sounds like they have been left behind. They don’t know if they want to commit to something based on a chapter title alone. They might just think, “I don’t know what’s happening. I haven’t read the previous chapters. This will take longer than 15 minutes to catch up on.”

TESTING SOLUTION #2

If readers see: “Chapter 12, A queen discovers her deity has been lying to her for twenty years.”

Do they now have a reason to click? Is a hook better?

It could work. Instead of stuffing keywords into the post, I could focus on reducing friction and creating curiosity in the post title.

Chapter titles help existing readers navigate a web of posts to read a serial in order. But they don’t do anything more than that—they don’t invite new readers in.

So maybe the title needs to be something like a story hook with the chapter # in it

OR

Maybe the post title needs to use keywords that identify the story’s genre, tropes, themes, or audience. For example,

• Chapter 12: The Wolf at the Gate | Dark Fantasy Romance Serial

• Chapter 12: The Wolf at the Gate | Rune Magic, Ancient Gods & Slow-Burn Romance

• Chapter 12: The Wolf at the Gate | A Dark fantasy romance serial for readers who love slow burn enemies to lovers, god-given trials, and rune magic

(Substack does not enforce a hard character limit for post titles. However, to prevent truncation in email inboxes and search engine results, it is highly recommended to keep your titles under 60 characters (or around 9 words)

Those titles speak to both the algorithm and humans.

I think it’s important for fiction posts—the stories we’re here to tell—to constantly be surrounded by audience signals.

TESTING SOLUTION #3

Posting chapter excerpts as Notes. Since Notes don’t really have any hard/crazy character limits, I could easily make the first visible line a hook and an excerpt directly under that trails off….And suggests readers find the full chapter posted.

For example, the NOTE would be:

What if 75 mortal women were stolen, sold, and selected for a deadly matchmaking game in the realm of faery? The Beast Upon the Mountain is a dark fantasy romance for readers who want The Bachelor mixed with Survivor. 18+

PROLOGUE

The Peddler’s grip on my jaw is tight as a vice. His second hand keeps my head tipped back as his third taps a thin metal rod against each of my teeth, counting.

“None missing. All white as bleached bones and sharp enough to tear through flesh.”

When he finally lets my face go, I have to fight against the weight of my chains to keep from slumping forward. I stretch my aching jaw.

The Peddler’s two right arms bend at the elbows and he plants both hands against his side. The left arm hangs, the instrument twirling over and through his seven fingers.

“Delivered as promised,” Papa says, keeping his eyes from mine.

“Can she run?” The Peddler asks, arching a brow at my father.

“She works diligently on the farm. Rises before sunrise to ensure the house is waking even before me and her ma. She can tame a mare, deliver a calf, butcher a pig. I send her on errands into town often. She’s quicker than her brother and cleverer. Don’t be fooled by the raggedness of her now. My daughter can hunt and build shelter. She’s tough as iron.”

The Peddler spits on the ground in front of Papa, a smattering of green fluid that sizzles against the straw littering the soil. Displeased at the mention of iron which all faeries detest.

Papa has read me stories every morning during breakfast about creatures like the one before us. Some families spend devotional time studying the good book. My father led me through countless folktales and myths about the dangerous fae and the wild girls who wandered through faery circles or under bridges. Was I stupid to have believed them to be no more than simple stories, not warnings that one day he would sell me to the very monsters he’d spent my life warning me about?

“Can she run?” The Peddler asks again.

“She can.”

“Can she climb?”

I’ve climbed our rickety wooden step ladder thousands of times in my twenty seven years. I’ve climbed atop horses and up burly oaks. Over hay bales or into tractors.

“Climb?” Papa asks as if he’s never seen me do any of these things.

“If she were dangling off a cliff side, could she climb without ropes?”

This monster was asking if I could mountain climb? Father stuttered, “Ah, if—sure. Yes.”

The Peddler’s left hand shoots out and grabs my right wrist. He holds my hand up to his face, all three eyes squinting at the callouses on my palms and the dirt under my fingernails. Scrutinizing. Skeptical.

“Can you crawl, girl?” The Peddler addresses me for the first time in the past hour since Papa invoked him from the river, his hot breath wafting the scent of rotted fish toward me.

I glare at him—a plethora of indecent responses scripting across my thoughts and playing out their potentially violent consequences should I piss the Peddler off.

“Jupiter,” my father says in warning.

But every warning he’s provided throughout my life up till now, every lesson at the breakfast table, spoils in my head. Meaningless.

I meet the Peddler’s fish-like eyes, staring into his ugly gray-scaled face as his gills flare in his neck.

“I can run, climb, crawl, and swim. But I can also lie, cheat, steal, and kill. I am not as helpless as you think I am. These chains around my wrists and ankles are not signs of weakness—but of misplaced trust betrayed. I will never make the same mistake again. Take me with you at your own risk. I am too great a trouble to be worth the price he’s demanded.”

[…continue reading the Prologue here…]

A LAYERED APPROACH

I am going to test a layered method.

For example:

Chapter 7: SORTED, The Beast Upon the Mountain | Dark fantasy romance serial, captor romance, magic trials, enemies to lovers.

[HEADER] A dark fantasy romance featuring wicked fae, deadly trials, forbidden devotion, and enemies-to-lovers tension.

{BRIEF BLURB OF SERIAL}

[LINK TO CHAPTER ONE]

{2-3 SENTENCE RECAP OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER}

[POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…POST BODY… story…]

{LINK TO NEXT CHAPTER}

[FOOTER] The Beast Upon the Mountain is a dark fantasy romance inspired by folklore, faery magic, ancient curses, love that changes you, and slow-burn surrender. Perfect for adult readers who loved (comp title).

Or something like that. Layering in context so the algorithm understands what the post is. Because I’m sorry, but the Algorithm can’t translate my characters’ dialogue and my worldbuilding and prose into something broadly discoverable.

Let me know what you think in the comments below! Do you have any insight? Have you noticed something similar? What are you trying and is it working??

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I (foolishly) invested about $10,000 in producing my debut novel and made barely anything back until I learned how to harness social media (kind of).

With my amateur authorpreneur turned content creator efforts, I made over $30,000 after pushing out book two.

Then I quit social media and lost all my readers because not all social media innately lets you build an email list or keep your audience if you leave the platform. Which is why I love Substack.

Four years after book two was published, I’m back online (literally and figuratively). Starting this whole indie author gig over again from scratch—on Substack and social media (kind of).

Here’s what I’ve learned and am still experimenting with.

Disclaimer: Treat me and my journey like a case study, not a blueprint. I didn’t write this article to influence you or funnel you into a course launch. I am not here to sell author education or marketing tips. I will share some resources but I’m online to sell books. And to sell books, an author needs to find readers. To find readers, one must be willing to put oneself out… there. In the dreaded swamps and misty bogs of social media.

So this is my honest two-cents on how to find readers in 2026 as an indie author. By getting uncomfortable, hiking up the skirts, trudging through mud, making friends with frogs, and becoming a swamp princess. Even if you embark on the quest begrudgingly, the key is to embark, regardless of the squelching and stench.

How I Launched my Indie Debut Novel Online

Over 2018-2019 I was preparing to independently publish my debut dark fantasy novel, The Sunderlands, under the pen name, Anastasia King. I mentioned earlier that I spent about $10k during this time, funded by a full time nursing career, an unbridled addiction, and borderline-delirious enthusiasm.

What did I spend the money on, you wonder?

• Courses and consultations

• How-to books & craft books

• TWO designers/illustrators

• Editing/proofreading services

• Formatting

• Paid social media ads

• Professional photography and photo presets

• Book events admissions

• Travel

• Business cards/brochures/media kits

• Website building & hosting/maintenance fees

• Merch/swag

• Giveaway gifts

• Softwares (writing, editing, design, photoshop)

• Hardware (external drives, laptop, microphone, headphones, lighting)

• Subscriptions (web-based business tools, suites, and data storage)

• Business & legal fees (starting an LLC is not for the weak)

• Home Office supplies, decor, and utility expenses

• ISBNs and barcodes

• Copyright registration

• Proof book copies

• ARC & signed book copies

• Memberships to exclusive groups for Indie Authors

Trust me, not all of this is necessary at entry level. Or at all.

Will publishing a book all on your lonesome cost you money? Yes. Absolutely.

Should you rob yourself to do this? NO.

I was doing all my marketing on Instagram. I was fully hiding behind my pen name, leaning heavily on daily engagement with other indie authors to build a following. Nobody really knew who I was or what I was building besides a book. My original account had thousands of followers (and in true Breanna fashion, I deleted it).

I think I was able to sustain this for a while, until the book actually launched, positioning myself as this other version of myself that didn’t feel real, all because I was probably manic and definitely drunk almost all the time. Liquid courage.

Obviously it wasn’t healthy to be constantly drinking, constantly commenting, constantly posting this persona that wasn’t real. After the book launched, exhaustion caught up and I kind of went into this publishing hangover.

I’d learned hard and fast. Expensively. At the time, I could afford to do so. I learned a lot from the process but it didn’t pay me back for years. My motivation to publish fell apart. Look!

I earned around $300 TOTAL on The Sunderlands from September 2019 to August 2021. That’s $300 in two years…

Then in August 2021, in ONE MONTH, I earned approximately $967 in royalties from global amazon marketplaces on Book One alone while promoting Book Two on TikTok.

The pandemic happened. Shivers.

I moved out of my home town and threw myself into nursing full time because of the state of emergency. I was trying to start over in life while the globe was choking. I worked over time upon over time in step-down ICU conditions, and this did nothing to heal my burn out.

It was at this time that I was reading some favorite authors, like Amelia Hutchins’ Legacy of the Nine Realms series and Sarah J Maas’ ACOSF. This inspired me to go full-bore into indie publishing again. So I joined TikTok and tossed my nursing career in the trash.

I went on to make over $30,000 in a TikTok marketing marathon from August 2021 to February 2022, with the pre-order/release of book two, Kings of Shadow and Stone.

I was writing and making content full time. But I was still drinking.

Despite reviews like this (crying as I reread these), I pulled an Avatar Last Airbender and vanished when my readers needed me most.

Since joining Substack, I’ve been discussing the experience returning to Aureum, melting the iceburg I was in, and writing again soberly. You can start reading more about this here. And I go more in depth (getting more personal) about this for invested subscribers, here.

Indie Publishing Saved my Life

Mental illness and addiction were a flammable cocktail for rapid indie success to ignite. Suddenly, I was wide open. Praise also came with criticism. The financial upturn did not come with a new ability to suddenly manage spending, especially when it came to buying alcohol.

Things changed harder and faster. Life kind of spiraled out of control. My dog was suddenly terminally ill. I was suddenly on a ledge.

People that love me saved my life. I mentioned briefly on TikTok that my dog was sick and this brought a friend I really needed back into my life.

I got sober and stopped writing. Stopped selling books. Started working as a nurse again. Started connecting with patients who were at rock bottom and who were wrestling with addiction.

But all the while, in my head. In my dreams. In my every waking moment. I was writing Blood Waker in my mind.

It was a mental touchstone.

The echoes of what I’d built—what I’d tasted for a moment still lingering on my tongue. Headier than any drink.

I returned to Aureum, dipping a toe in here and lifting a wayward branch crossing the path there. I peeked. I skirted around it.

The forest of stories within was still and silent.

What I had created was a world and it was waiting for my return. Knowing it was there, that I could throw the gates open and walk back in whenever I was ready, that every stray thought about the story could matter again, kept me going. My gaze kept wandering back to the treeline.

It became my anchor. The story, half scripted in my head, became a tether to who I was meant to be. Under what life had done to me and what I had done to myself, there was the real version of me that was trying to tell this story. Her voice echoing across long years of battered adulthood, from a quieter, calmer, once more vibrant place in my inner child’s memories.

I tried to get back to her. I laced my boots up more than once and wandered till they came undone. I tried TikTok again. Was too overwhelmed. I tried Instagram again. Hated it. I’ve tried Threads, my own blog site, and then I learned about something called Substack.

While the near-immediate success from TikTok sped up my self-destruction, it also opened my eyes about the power of being indie. Now recovered, I’ve fully realized the power of being an indie author and am dedicating myself to this path again. Boots laced tight—no coming undone this time.

Someone rececntly asked me whether I’d do it all again...

The answer is, I am. Yes. Because I’d run back to Aureum again and again. It’s the safest place in my head.

I’m here now, searching for readers again.

I can see that lull in the graph between September 2019 and August 2021. I’m in that bracket. Again.

And with about seven years’ experience as an indie author, I’ve stopped bullying myself, stopped comparing myself to more productive authors. I’ve accepted my story and my journey. And flipped the switch back on in my authorpreneur brain. I’m hiking up my skirts and stepping into the bog and becoming the woodland frog princess I was born to be. Because there are readers who are waiting. And I’ve been waiting for too long.

How I’m finding readers today

I wish the answer could be off pure vibes alone. But let’s be really honest here for a second. Substack isn’t a business model. I’ve heard it called a microphone. An amplifier. Not a magnet. Not an end-all, be-all.

The answer begrudgingly is social media. Because that’s the industry today. Publishing, especially indie publishing, is content-marketing and word-of-mouth driven.

While I still can’t stomach TikTok, I’m still trying to find a way to be online authentically. Fortunately, Substack lets me do this naturally. But bookish folks aren’t here yet. Not in the multi-millions like they are on Booksta and Booktok. Bookstack is still a baby thing. Which is both exciting and challenging.

Subscriptions are wonderful. I am building something here that will find the right people who will stay. But subscriptions aren’t as evergreen as I want to think. People don’t always want another bill. So I might find readers here and they might stay. Or they won’t.

What happens if an author’s income is spread only between books and substack? Is that enough? Not in my experience.

Because while TikTok made me money, it was the same premise. My income came solely from TikTok (monetized) and selling books. That’s two channels.

And that failed because it wasn’t sustainable for me. It wasn’t healthy. I was overexposed and my need to create content was in constant competition with my need to write.

What’s healthier? Being on more platforms? Being spread across toast like too little butter, as Bilbo says? I don’t think so.

Some nuggets of truth I’ve learned from years of varying marketing efforts, is that you do need more than one channel for traction and income. Most successful entrepreneurs who are millionaires have at least seven streams.

I don’t think the answer is to put your paws in every pie. I think the answer is to find your favorite pies and keep them close. Not to spin every plate at once. But to become a connoisseur of your chosen pies. An apple, pumpkin, and sweet potato pie expert if you will.

MY APPLE PIE

Writing books that connect with people is pie number one. It’s our favorite pie. This pie needs no explanation. It’s the all-time favorite for a reason. But this isn’t how I find readers. It’s what I have for readers to find when they discover me.

MY PUMPKIN PIE

Substack is pumpkin pie. Subscriptions ebb and flow like seasons. And lots of people would argue that pumpkin pie also belongs to its own season.

I use substack to connect and promote, but mostly to dig deeper roots by oversharing with readers who want ice cream or whipped cream on their pie books. To share my excitement about my books and why I’m excited.

I love pumpkin pie. But not everybody does. Most people just want the apple pie.

MY SWEET POTATO PIE

If you’re like me you didn’t know sweet potato pie was even a thing until you were an adult who claimed to have good taste and then was challenged to prove it by trying some.

Sweet potato pie is that surprisingly good pie that’s better than it sounds.

For me, this is Pinterest! And hopefully, Facebook, maybe.

For someone else it might be Youtube or Threads or Reddit.

The reason I like Pinterest is because I still love the aesthetic marketing content creators share on Booksta & BookTok but don’t want to have to be in videos or labor too much over content. I personally get almost all my reading recs from Pinterest and some from FB groups/book influencer pages. I know there are readers in both place.

This Book Influencer is a great example of a successful bookish FB page.

Explore my Pinterest TBR here to see what I’m talking about.

Under it all, I’m interested in Pinterest and FB because I’m interested in platforms that allow me to share storytelling content, such as written or visual, and allow for conversation.

If FB doesn’t work I’ll try Youtube Shorts as a last ditch effort.

Helpful Resources for Braving the Bog

This video The Art of *Subtle* Book Marketing (no burnout, more book sales!) AMAZING video— if you watch only one of these, let it be this one. She says PIE SLICE! hahaha she knows about the pie. My favorite quote from her…

“Conversation is the most important thing… Because creating book sales is all about creating conversation.”

This video is interesting if you want to learn more about FB marketing specifically.

One of my fave authors swears by FB —> Amelia Hutchins has had great success there. She’s on other platforms too but I think FB is her bread and butter. When I was a newbie indie, she was kind and generous enough to feature me/let me share in her group which was the main reason I got any readers.

There’s lots of groups you can connect with readers in directly on FB that I underutilized my first go-around with indie publishing. I plan to give FB a more robust effort this time around.

Don’t know what to post off of substack? Check out Method Agency’s tools for authors. I use these and highly recommend because I have this issue where I go to post and abruptly forget everything I am as an author or how to talk about my books. Really helpful stuff!

I’m also a huge fan of canva templates on Etsy because while I love graphic design and have done it for years, I’m not above using a post template to save time.

This search yields incredible results on youtube:

like this video IF I STARTED SELF-PUBLISHING IN 2026…

and this one WHY MOST INDIE AUTHORS FAIL

What other social media, if any, are you using to drive readers to your substack? Would you try or avoid any of what I’ve mentioned. leave your thoughts in the comments! Thank you for reading.

DISCLAIMER: I am basically brand new to the Star Wars universe. So please don’t be a snob. I’m just here to have fun! Some links are affiliate links. This post contains some spoilers but mostly vibes.

If you’re a 90s baby like me, you probably watched Star Wars, Episodes I-III in the movie theaters or at least at some point of your childhood.

At that point I didn’t even understand episodes IV-VI were the original thing. All I knew was I wanted to ship Anakin and Padme forever. I was obsessed with Padme, and even moreso with her doomed romance with the overly dramatic Hayden Christensen guy who killed a bunch of younglings and then got deep fried while she died pushing out his kids.

Which is why I hated Star Wars for the longest time. I was like ten years old and traumatized.

I had no fucking clue who Darth Vader really was. I was like four or five years old when I first watched. And then grew up watching only episodes I-III. My dad tried to get me to watch episodes IV-VI but I was so butt hurt over Ani going to the darkside and choking out Padme, I had no interest. Because I was growing up with Aragorn and Arwen, so Anakin and Padme felt like a betrayal. I was hurting. I mean look at this shit… what ten year old wasn’t hurting over this?

@ahh.ffxwho can blame you, padmé || ib: @Marvel3000 || #starwarsedit #padmeamidala #anakinskywalker #starwarsattackoftheclones #lanadelreysong ignore this: scary my god you’re divine - anakin and padme love edit - new edit trend - star wars movies

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ANYWAY. I digress. My childhood TV trauma around Anakin is why I have to write this review of the Obi-Wan Kenobi tv show. This is in no way a deep analysis of the show or of Star Wars—like at all. I just need to get this off my chest.

I was as equally invested in Anakin’s relationship with Obi-wan and I couldn’t get a grip when Anakin was becoming more and more obtuse, melancholic, and delusional. It was so frustrating to watch. And I feel like the Obi-Wan show basically tied up all my frayed feelings with a neat little bow. A bloodied, dirtied bow. But a bow. SHOW SPOILERS BELOW.

What meant the most to me in this show was

1. Obi-Wan’s relationship with the child Princess Leia, and

2. the last battle scene between Ben (Kenobi) and Darth Vader.

OBI-WAN AND PRINCESS LEIA

I loved Obi-Wan and Princess Leia’s relationship in this show so much. First of all, the lil actress who played Leia was amazing and so adorable! I felt so connected to her character and this whole aspect of the show only make my (newfound) connection to episode IV-VI even stronger.

My favorite parts of the show for these two were when Obi-Wan rescues Leia from the "interrogation? Torture?” chamber. When the lights went out and the light saber flared to life, revealing a stealthy Ben, my jaw was on the floor. This show was so beautiful. Also when she says “you knew my mother. Are you my real father?” 😭😭😭

My other favorite moment was when Ben tells Leia about Anakin and Padme (a little), and tells her the great traits she’s inherited from them. I was crying.

Obi-Wan told Leia that her mother was kind, wise, discerning, and generous, and that her father was passionate, fearless, and forthright. He noted that they were both exceptional people who bore an exceptional daughter. It was amazing.

OBI-WAN AND DARTH VADER

Okay okay okay lemme compose myself because THIS

These images are going to live in my head forever. Obi-wan breaking Darth Vader’s mask to reveal Anakin’s (Hayden’s) face, and Vader telling Obi that he killed Ani himself. When I tell you the tears were streaming down my face like I was in a Cold Play music video… I’m not exaggerating.

I could not breathe.

My whole heart and soul were invested in this episode. It was the closure Obi-Wan needed but it was also the closure I truly needed.

I fell in love with Star Wars at this exact moment.

My husband had been trying to get me to get into SW for two years , and I was enjoying it. But that bitter little maggot of pain was still gnawing away. Until this scene. I felt like I could breathe again. It finally clicked for me.

When Obi-Wan pushed those rocks off of him, thinking of Leia, I felt that weight come off of me too. And when Anakin resolved Obi-Wan’s guilt, I finally detached from him. He had truly turned to the Dark Side, like a moon turning its back on everything its light was supposed to touch. He was a Sith who had killed his own humanity through his hateful and twisted choices, and was admitting it out loud. I didn’t know how badly I needed to hear it.

This series completely rewrote my feelings and understanding of Star Wars, of Padme and Anakin’s tragic relationship, of Darth Vader and Obi-Wan, and of episode IV-VI. And as I watched the end of episode VI the other day, I was crying all over again as Luke cradled Anakin as he died. As he gave him a fiery burial.

It was like everything everyone else ever seemed to feel about Star Wars that I just couldn’t access or experience, finally came rushing in because of this miniseries. And I am so deeply attached to this whole story world now.

ON (FINALLY) LOVING STAR WARS

I’m hoping to learn more about the Star Wars universe. I’m currently watching the Mandalorian show with my husband and am obsessed I want everything baby Grogu.

If you want to shop my nerdy wish list for yourself, find it here.

There’s LOTS of Star Wars merch on there as well as other nerdy things I love. Perfect finds for Father’s Day! Trying to keep a grip on my impulses to buy Star Wars baby stuff (one day).

Speaking of, I’m so thankful to my husband for him bringing me into the Star Wars universe the way he did. I’ve always been deeply rooted in my love of fantasy and only ever dipped a toe into science fiction in the ways of Mass Effect, Halo, and other video games.

I finally feel like something “sci-fi” truly belongs to me in a personal way beyond games. And that’s a really big deal for me because it also deepens things I have in common with both my husband and my dad. Ben (my husband, not Kenobi), loves sci-fi and used to tolerate fantasy lol so we’ve sort of completed each other this way. But I brought him into LOTR world and he loves it. Now he’s done that for me with Star Wars. Which is just really cool! Crying again lol.

I’d like to also write some reviews (mostly feelings) for Rogue One and The Mandalorian series. Be sure to subscribe to come back.

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And be sure to WATCH OBI-WAN KENOBI IF YOU HAVEN’T!

WATCH IT!!!

I’m so excited to take you behind the books in this article. Let’s examine the mythology that inspired my book series! I loved studying Mythology for The World of Aureum Series, and am excited to share some of what I’ve learned with you. This article is more than research notes. It’s personal—why I chose this lore to fuel my FMC and who Keres is to me. Thanks for being here! Enjoy!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Papa once took me into the woods to forage for mushrooms. He taught me which were edible or poisonous, and to tread carefully around those which grow in neighborly hoops, gathering themselves to form stepping stones across the forest floor.

He told me stories about a man who once stepped into a circle of mushrooms, and his foot touched down in the faerie realm. A bear in a trap, he was caught there by the ankle and dragged into a dance from which he could not escape or excuse himself.

The music played and he danced ceaselessly. A passerby caught wind of the music and stuck his head into the circle. There he found the man, small as a wingless butterfly, dancing on spindly legs. He plucked him from the troop of faeries and pulled him back into our world where he became himself once more. But he died that night. From exhaustion. From the loss of the sweetest music his body had ever joined.

Dread slithers down my spine as I take my first step down the stairs into the Void. Following closely after Calliope, with Marcelina and her friend tagging behind me. Beyond Cal there is only the descent. Down, down, down the spiral staircase. And what is a spiral if not an eternal circle, an open-ended question?

Is stepping into the inner ring of this tower a trap? Will more of us die deep down in its spiral?

Music filters upward from the darkness below. Beckoning. Taunting. Women clamor at the threshold, trying to shove themselves into a line to follow after the four of us.

As Calliope takes a few steps deeper, torches on the wall light with amber flame, illuminating the stone staircase in a sequence of star bursts that plunge all the way to the distant bottom. The siren lights reveal nothing more than the shape of the steps, the cold stone which sits unmoving.

Another step. Then another.

The air smells of wet earth and stagnant water. The only sounds are the scuffling of our slippered feet, our breathing, and the murmurs of the women above yet to enter.

There is no banister to cling to, only the cold wall of the tower. Each step drops off its right edge with no guard to keep you from stumbling over. Calliope’s left hand lifts to the stone face of the wall, gliding against it as she takes careful steps downward at an even pace.

At her touch, the wall ripples. The Castle’s familiar mewling echoes up the hollow of the spiral, dissipating into a purr. I lightly place my hand against the wall and a smile steals my mouth as the wavelets brush against my fingers.

Beneath the Castle’s purring, a song plucked swiftly across invisible harp strings reverberates off the stone. The sound of flutes whirls into the air. My heart beats in my throat, and I grip the book I’ve taken from the library a little tighter.

There is compulsion in the music—not to dance, but to descend.

It hastens Calliope’s steps and quickens my own along with my heart beat. I stumble on the next step, feet trying to move too fast.

“You hear it too?” Cal asks, stopping on her step and glancing over her shoulder.

“Yes, it feels like a compulsion.”

“Be careful.” Cal turns to take the next steps.

I compose myself, glancing at the book in my hand, Devotee. I let out a shaky breath.

One step, then another.

“What’s a compulsion?” Marcelina chirps.

“Magic that bends your will—like how we can never get out of our seats at dinner until the bell rings,” I say.

“Oh, interesting. Is that what stops me from reading the Devotional?”

My brows purse together but the music keeps me from turning around to look at her. “Stops you from reading the Devotional?”

“Yeah, every time that I can see it in the room, I can’t touch it. It just sits on the empty bed. Whenever I’m not looking at it directly, I can see it—I give it the side-eye. But once I turn toward it or try to go for it, I can’t move. So, I’ve just started avoiding it at this point. Being magically frozen is not fun.”

“What? Marcelina, how—wait did you say empty bed?”

“I don’t have a roommate.”

At that, I do stop and turn to gawk at her. Women behind her hiss and glare, urging me to keep walking and not hold up the line. The compulsion magic in the music makes me itch to move down the steps but I steel myself against it and meet Marcelina’s eyes.

Her brown eyes dart between my face and the next few steps I’m blocking.

“We have to keep moving, don’t we?” She chuckles nervously.

“You live in your room alone?” I ask.

She jabs her thumb over her shoulder. “Well, hopefully, Nivina will be able to stay with me now—now that her roommate—well, Elodie. You know...”

Nivina stands at Marcelina’s back, staring down at me with huge, watery green eyes. I can see Elodie again in my mind—being taken into the book, drowned, and devoured.

“Move it down there!” Someone above crows. That voice could only be Cressida’s.

The music seems to grow louder the longer I stand there staring at a confused Marcelina. But how could Marcelina have been rooming alone for the past two and a half weeks?

Seventy-five women were brought to the Castle.

I’d never even considered that one of the seventy-five of us would be here alone in this damned place. The other seventy-four of us were all split into pairs. Marcelina must have been the seventy-fifth woman, surviving in isolation all this time.

I turn and take the next step, my heart thumping off-beat from the crescendoing compulsion. We keep walking for minutes that feel like years. As if time is being rewritten in the song being played by invisible instruments.

Calliope is several steps deeper than all of us and I rush to catch her. I keep my gaze on her quick moving feet, the hem of her dress whispering over the stairs.

I can’t imagine having been in our room alone. We’ve kept each other steady and alive these few weeks. Marcelina has been doing this by herself—without the Devotional?

My gut squeezes. If I’d had to do this all alone, I’d probably be dead already.

If Calliope hadn’t won the Shepherd’s favor, this challenge might have killed us—or at least more women than it has. But Calliope has been strong and clever and brave. I’ve been clinging to her just as much as she has been to me.

Marcelina has had no one—I’d never even noticed her before today. Has she just been stuck in that room, friendless, defenseless, and clueless on how to survive in this place without the guidance of the Devotional?

If she brings Nivina with her back to her room—will that be allowed?

I swallow the thought down just as Calliope turns her eyes up at me.

“There’s a door down here!”

Right around the next curve of the stairwell, the steps jut out a little farther, creating more of a platform than a step. It’s only wide enough to possibly fit two people—if they’re careful.

Calliope stands before the door but as I come closer I realize there’s no handle.

The door’s face is grey as the stone its set in, but wooden. Unlike the door that took Cal to meet the Shepherd, there are no living carvings in the frame, and no words appear on the door. I lean closer to examine it—nothing changes.

Cal pushes on it.

It doesn’t budge.

“Odd,” she says, eying the door with a mix of suspiscion and determination.

I look down the stairs, hoping the appearance of a door means we’re nearing the bottom. Flamelight dots the darkness in a spiral that seems impossibly deep considering how many stairs we’ve descended. I scan the darkness for a hint—a shape.

“There’s another door!” I say, pointing at the level about three round-about’s down.

Firelight highlights the square of the door—a sleek cut out—an interruption in the raw stone.

Calliope looks at me, blue eyes widening. “How many doors could there be?”

Marcelina and Nivina linger on the step just above us, and nobody behind them complains this time that we’ve all stopped. Forty-nine women entered the library. My stomach sinks as I take a quick headcount.

“There are twenty-seven of us left. Maybe there’s a door for each of us? I don’t see an end to the stairwell. It’s too dark down there and the lights look as if they go on forever.”

“What do you think it is—where it might lead to?” Cal asks, pursing her lips in thought and planting one hand on her hips. She turns on her heel and looks past me, over the platform edge.

“I don’t like the idea of us being separated,” she says.

“Me neither.”

“Maybe we can try pushing on it together.” Marcelina steps down onto the platform with me and Cal, all of us sucking our stomachs in to stay close and away from the ledge. All three of us lean a shoulder on the cold door and push.

But nothing happens.

“Wait—wait, look!” I say, point at the inky lettering appearing on the door.

We stand there, clinging to each other, watching the words write themselves across the face of the door. Nivina stoops to see them as well and women above her crane their necks, eyes shining in the firelight.

“What’s it say?” Someone asks.

“It says,” Calliope’s voice trails off and her eyes shift from the door to the girl on my left.

My attention follows hers, both of us now staring at Marcelina—who’s just staring at the door open-mouthed.

“It says,” Marcelina says, swallowing thickly. “It says, ‘Only she may enter: She who Sleeps beside an Empty Bed. The Shepherd commands it.”

“Well?” Someone croons impatiently. “Who is she—what does it mean?”

“There were no words when I touched the door,” Cal says softly. “But now that you’ve touched it, it’s inviting you in.”

“Should I be afraid? I mean, is this because I—I don’t understand. I don’t want to be singled out.” Marcelina straightens her spine, glaring at the door.

“It might be a good thing,” Calliope says, her words clipped. “Something good might be on the other side of the door.”

One hand goes to her neck where the skin is still bruised from the necklace the Shepherd had given her. The other still holds her book.

It’s not his fault. That’s what she’d said. She’d defended the Shepherd and the necklace had choked her for it.

“It might be,” I say, looking between them. “But it might also not be. It’s your choice whether you open the door—and I don’t know that not opening it will be any safer. What if there isn’t another door for you down below? This one says only she who sleeps next to an empty bed may enter. Which means none of us can follow. If that door down there says something similar, you won’t be able to follow one of the rest of us.”

Marcelina lifts her chin, jaw ticking as she considers it. She looks down at the book in her hand.

“Open the door!” Someone shouts.

“Let’s go—I can’t take these stairs anymore.”

“There’s no other way out!”

The last point frightens me. I feel a shiver go through me. Will I have my own door too?

Marcelina lifts her empty hand to the door and a knob appears where one should already be. Silver, glinting in the firelight.

She turns it quickly and the door opens into darkness. The same darkness that swallowed Calliope when she went to meet the Shepherd, masks the room beyond the threshold and Marcelina as she crosses over it.

The door slams shut.

Calliope grabs my free hand, pulling my attention from the door. “We have to keep moving.”

I glance at Nivina who seems to be frozen in place, staring after Marcelina—at the door between them.

“Come on, Niv,” I say softly. “We’ll each have a door. She’ll be okay, we all will be.”

“I can’t do it,” she murmurs. The women behind her are getting fidgety.

“You can and you must,” I urge.

“Elodie went into a book. Now, Marcelina went into that terrible darkness. I can’t—we can’t just keep being herded like animals to our death. Snapped up in the jaws of something terrible and unnatural. This place—I can’t.”

I squeeze her hand. “Nivina, I need you to take a deep breath and get a grip. We are not going to die in this stairwell. I’m not. You’re not. No one is. We’ve lost enough of us today and now we have to get out of here. Move your feet.”

“It’s so dark down there,” Nivina sobs. “What if it never ends. The darkness—not just down here. Beyond the doors. At every dinner. Even in the bath. What if there is only death for us here?”

“And what if there’s something else?” Calliope asks.

Nivina’s eyes find Cal’s, tears spilling down her blanched cheeks. “Something else?”

“What if there’s something good to be found in this place?” Cal asks, her voice strengthening. She reaches up and touches my arm.

“Like this,” she says, offering Nivina a small smile. “Like friends.”

“If we stick together, we’ll be okay,” I add. “Marcelina got you out of that library and saved you from that monstrous book. She didn’t stop—she just jumped in to help you. Now, it’s our turn to move forward. We have to get out of here, to find Marcelina on the other side of wherever that door just took her. Okay?”

Nivina nods, wiping a tear away.

“Everybody,” Calliope calls, voice echoing up the stairwell like a swell over the symphony still playing. “To your doors. Don’t stop till you find your door and get through it. Do not stay here in this spiral to die. We have to keep moving—the Shepherd commands it!”

She turns and descends farther. The music quickens, rushing us down and down and down. We find more doors and take turns checking them, moving on from them fast when one doesn’t react, and only looking back when we hear one open behind us.

Women file into their doors like books into their places on a shelf. The doors open with a creak and shut with a bang. One door, two doors, three doors, four.

Each woman crosses her threshold, feet shuffling from platforms, over thresholds, into darkness. I hope that each woman who finds her door is stepping out of this faery circle-spiral staircase, and not into some other trap.

When Calliope’s door finally spells out her welcome, it does so by simply writing her name.

She breathes shakily as she reads the fine lettering. “He remembered my name.”

I grip her shoulder. “You gave him your name?”

Gooseflesh breaks out over my entire body at the idea of Calliope, trusting and bright-eyed, giving the wicked Shepherd—a faery king—her most precious truth: her name.

“He asked, so I told him,” she says with a shrug, trying to hide the smile that’s stealing across her mouth. “He is very handsome. I want to tell you everything about him. I couldn’t—”

“And you still shouldn’t. You’ve given a fae your name, Cal. He might still have some sway over you—or worse, some level of ownership. You shouldn’t betray any secrets he’s told you. Faeries hate to be betrayed, especially if he’s told you things no one else is supposed to know. Trust me. It’s safer for you to keep his secrets to yourself—and your name from any other faery’s ears. It might not be him on the other side of this door, you know.”

She sighs. “Alright. I know. You’re right.”

She chews on what I’ve said for a moment, sliding her attention to the door before hugging me. “I’ll see you back in the room.”

She squeezes me tight and then all but runs to her door. A silver knob appears at her closeness but before she reaches for it, she fixes her hair and smooths her dress with one hand, holding her book tight in the other.

She’s excited. She wants to see the Beast again?

Her door opens, giving no hint of what lays beyond the darkness, and she crosses through it quickly. It too, slams shut.

I am now leading five other women down the stairs. Every time I peer over the edge, the darkness seems to deepen. But I’m not afraid of the dark—never have been.

When my brother Hollis was ten he fell down the old well out back. Papa threw him a rope but he wasn’t strong enough to climb up or even hold on long enough for Papa to pull him out.

He’d spent all his energy trying to stay afloat in the dark water, screaming and crying for someone to help him. Papa had heard his faint cries as he worked near by and stuck his head into the well to find Hollis, a tiny little thing, flailing in the water with his gangly, weary limbs.

Hollis didn’t weigh much then and still doesn’t. I was only nine but I was strong enough to pick him up any day. We wrestled often. So, Papa sent me down on the rope, with it tied around my waist.

I grabbed onto Hollis. Wrapped my arms and legs around him like I’d done countless times while playfighting. Papa pulled us both up—me clinging to my brother like I was an extension of the rope, a lasso around a calf. Hollis felt half-dead in my arms. A bit heavier from his clothes being wet and from him going limp half-way up.

It had been very dark down in the well. Hollis’ breath was heavy on my ear and his skin was ice-cold. Cold as the damp air in this stairwell. Cold as death.

A door slams behind me. Four women remain behind me now.

I wasn’t scared when we rescued Hollis and I’m not scared now. Not of the dark or of the cold. I’ve never been allowed to be too scared to do something—especially not for my family. And if these women are the only family I have left, I have to keep moving for them and myself.

I tell myself this over and over. Even as another door slams and then another, leaving three of us on the stairs. Each bang loud as gunshots. I tell myself I’m unafraid still, even as the next door slams and then the last one.

Even as all the torches in the stairwell suddenly wink out and I am plunged into darkness with no music and no warmth. Only the sound of my own breathing. Only the feel of each careful step down stairs I can’t see anymore.

“I’m not afraid,” I say out loud, voice trembling.

My hand is on the wall, groping in the darkness—feeling for a break in the stone. For a door.

I take another step. Then another.

“I’m not afraid,” I say. My throat is tight and my voice is hoarse. “I’m not.”

A groove in the wall gives way beneath my fingers and my hand glides over the smooth face of a door. Silvery light begins to cut through the door in thread-like, glowing scrawl.

Tears fall from my eyes as I laugh, wild with glee.

Only she may enter:

she who has given all,

but was given up.

The Shepherd Commands it.

The silver knob shines even in the darkness—like Calliope’s diamond necklace. I turn the knob and the door creaks open.

I step over the threshold, the sound of my own breathing louder in the cloistered darkness.

All I see is velvety black and all I feel is the slam of the door behind my back.

[NEXT CHAPTER, SEVEN: SORTED… coming soon]

The Beast Upon the Mountain is a dark fantasy romance story inspired by folklore and faery magic. Perfect for adult readers who love the concept of selection and competition for a dark, forbidden captor romance and survival of deadly trials, ancient curses, love that changes you, and slow-burn surrender.

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Basic Intro to Vision Boards

Everyone and their momma, dog walker, and hair dresser has probably heard of the “Vision Board.”

They don’t work for my neurospicy brain. I’ve tried using them over and over again and they always end up forgotten on the wall or in the trash. I know lots of people love them and have had great success with them, but if you’re an ADHDer like me and you want to have something tangible to help turn your sensory brain on in a positive way for your writing goals, I’m here for show & tell today.

Today, I’ll be exploring my writing diary—a visual journal—with you.

Vision Boards became super popular around 2006 and haven’t left the mainstream. They’re linked to “The Law of Attraction” and are used to help people visualize their goals and manifest them into reality. If your brain is primed to seek or notice something, you’ll find it.

There are lots of benefits to visualizing your goals that have been explored even more since vision boards became so popular. Google says it helps with:

• Heightened Clarity and Focus: By curating specific images and words, you define what truly matters to you. This cuts through the noise and keeps you on track when distractions arise.

• Scientific “Brain Priming”: Regularly looking at your board activates the brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS). This subconscious filter starts automatically highlighting ideas, resources, and opportunities that align with your goals.

• Sustained Motivation: Visual representations connect you to the emotions your goals evoke. On difficult days, this visual reminder reignites your initial excitement and drive.

• Mental Well-being: Focusing on positive future possibilities rather than stressors gives you a greater sense of control. This can significantly lower anxiety and help combat feelings of hopelessness.

• Goal Accountability: Simply having a vision board in your workspace or as your phone lock screen triples your accountability efforts, encouraging consistent daily action.

So why don’t they work for me? My brain glazes over them. I’m also near-sighted so having anything on a wall is a sure-fire way to make it blurry, and therefore, not practical for me.

The digital alternative feels impersonal and distant in a way I can’t connect with. Sure, I love Pinterest and use it for everything. But when it comes to pinning my hopes & dreams on a board, I don’t revisit it as often as I should.

In a second, I’m going to get into how my brain actually works and what I learned through getting sober that helped me craft an engaging visual journal for writing. But first…

Maybe you haven’t ever heard of Vision Boarding before. Let me clarify the two common types today:

1. The DIGITAL “board” which can be a static collage image you use as a device wallpaper/background image or a perpetual Pinterest Board like this one. Some people use Notion for this or some other productivity dashboard they’ll engage with frequently online, where they can see the visuals of their goals.

2. A PHYSICAL board you can attach images to and hang where you will see it often. People make a new vision board for every new goal or for every year in perpetuity. It’s like an inspiration art project that’s usually done for a whole year, so you can see what you want to accomplish or experience that year at-a-glance. If you’re as whimsical as I am and are looking to make a physical board, check out this cork board—it’s shaped like a butterfly and so cute!

See? They’re pretty cool but they just… sit there. Which brings me what works for my instead.

My ADHD brain loves sensory stimulation. I am a very hands-on person. When I first got sober, I struggled really badly with basically all executive function. Household, self care, pet care, and even essential tasks were scrambled in my raw-wired, sober brain.

Many of those early days, I’d even forgotten to eat, missing multiple meals. I forgot to pay bills, to go to appointments, to shower, to cycle laundry from the washer to the dryer, etc. My brain was swarmed by knowing what to do but not organizing that information into functional flow.

So, one thing I did was I started using a cork board to map out my tasks on movable index cards. Each card was a task and I put them in order of completion.

For example, the first card was “wake up”, second was “bathroom/brush teeth,” third was “get dressed,” then “Pet care,” and “eat breakfast.” Once I’d completed the task, I’d physically remove the card from the board.

This hands-on system helped me retrain my recovering alcoholic brain to function at basic activities of daily living. This system was mutable and priority ordered. I was able to put cards up and take them down in the right sequence. It was a physical confirmation of completing my tasks—of taking care of myself. Which was a very rewarding way to reparent myself at a very basic level.

The second thing I did for tasks I struggled to complete despite the cards… this is actually so embarrassing—but it worked. I bought a baby toy lol. Specifically a cognitive puzzle (for babies). This one is similar to what I got, but this one would also work. And honestly, I recommend anyone silly enough to try this.

During my early sobriety, I was enrolled in my creative writing certificate program and taking a class called the Psychology of Play. It taught me to gamify work, which I then applied to my every day tasks. And I got the idea to do this next trick with the toy by a website asking permission to “collect cookies.” Lol. I wish I was kidding.

My brain was like… I would… collect… cookies. So I bought a sorting & stacking puzzle toy for babies, and used each shape to gamify my tasks. It worked like this:

I placed a shape cookie at the location of each task. Once I completed it, I could collect my cookie and restack it. But I had to go in size order to stack correctly, which reschooled my brain into a priority task-flow.

For example, high priority tasks like moving wet laundry from washer into dryer, got a big cookie. Putting dry laundry away got a medium cookie, and washing dishes got a small cookie.

It was like a cookie scavenger hunt. A side-quest, cookie-collecting to-do list.

It worked.

I rehabilitated myself, catering to my neurodivergent, sensory needs and treating myself like I was recovering from a toxic brain injury—which I was.

Now, fortunately, I no longer need baby toys to know how to do laundry, but these simple steps helped me rebuild my life on functional routines.

So now, when people talk about vision boards, I just kind of blink at them in awkward silence. My brain needs tactility. Puzzles, games, and sensory feedback.

Vision boards are static. They don’t move with you. So that’s what prompted me to make something that I could pick up, feel, and change. While everyone seemed to be shifting from physical collage art to digital VBs, I shifted to the Vision Journal.

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My Vision Journals

You could make a vision journal out of a regular journal, adding images to it like a scrap book. Or you could be as completely unhinged as I am, and make the whole thing from scratch. I’ve done this twice for two different journals and both have been amazing experience to make and use.

I started with designer paper like this one from Michaels or this one from Amazon.

To shop online, I search 12x12 designer paper pad. They’re usually a pretty cardstock, and some come in pads of over 50 pages (with duplicates) and have an art theme. I’ve used these for years to make visual journals and even a custom tarot deck that is based on my fantasy book series. These are a staple in my house!

1. To start, I fold one 12x12 pretty paper in half and cut it down that folded line so I have two 6x12 sheets. I do that for as many pieces of decorative paper I want to have in my journal. I then fold each strip in half so it makes a small booklet. I like to use the folded pages to keep a closed spine for my little book.

2. Then I’ll insert what ever ruled or dotted paper I want to use to write on, making sure those papers are cut to fit inside, so about 6x6.

3. Then the unhinged part. I use an embroidery needle and embroidery floss to poke through each page and sew them together. Alternatively, you could use a hole puncher and clips or pins to bind the book.

4. The fun part is adding cut-out images to make collage pages. I use glue sticks and double sided tape to adhere images. I get images from Pinterest or Unsplash and print them out, cut them out, and arrange them in the book. You could also use scrapbook resources like papers, junk journal ephemera, and stickers. Cuttings from magazines or newspapers, or if you’re feeling really crazy, snippets from your own books or notes. In the one book, I have over a dozen collage pages that each have their own visual theme. I leave the notebook pages alone so I can journal in the book.

5. And because I am a chaos goblin, I faux “laminate” each collage page and the outer cover papers with clear packing tape.

Nothing about this has to be perfect and I kind of just stab thread through mine until it’s safe enough to knot it. The book wont fall apart and I’ve even dropped one of mine into the bathtub lol But the packing tape mostly protected it.

This is the result—my most recent vision journal for writing and a look at a non-journaling vision book I’d made previously for my sobriety/recovery.

Looking for supplies to make your own? Shop HERE.

One important entry in my Writing Vision Journal was about the importance of the journal itself.

This journal is important. There will always be a page here, begging for my visit from within these sacred pages. Calling, “Pick me up and read me!”

When my craft feels hazy, when the work feels far from perfection, when my energy dwindles so that I feel immovable but my mind races—This page exists, its voice unsilenced. So that I’m always beckoning myself back into the clearing, back to source.

This book is important because my vision is important. Even when I don’t feel like it is. It always is. I— this book shall remind me, even when I fail to recall it myself. My dreams and my stories are important and worthwhile in perpetuity. This page says, “I was here, and I loved, and lived with love. I wrote it all down, for myself and for whoever comes next. I’m still in here. Pick me up and read me.”

It’s important that I return to myself and listen.

-07/20/2025

This journaling practice has been really healing. I’ve been able to hold a physical book and write my hopes, dreams, and fears about writing down, but nestle it all between my clear, visualized goals.

As writers, we write on instinct. So the journaling practice is natural but elevated by the visuals. When I return to this book, I remember who I am as a creator and why I’m creating. Not just for monetary success—to inspire someone else. And I can’t do that if I can’t inspire myself.

This is more than a journal and more than a scrapbook. It’s a guide! I love flipping through my visual journal’s pages and reading what I’ve written about writing, creative block, doubt, and my goals for the future. I love being able to see what I’ve had in mind for myself and my art. When I need an extra boost, I pick up my book. And it’s better than it hanging on a wall because there’s pieces of me and whatever inspires me waiting inside. It feels private and personal—not overexposed. Therefore, it’s more immersive for me. It’s like a picture book for my own creative spark.

If you’re a pre-published author who doesn’t yet have a book baby to hold in real life, consider making a visual journal for your book. Fill it with your story inspiration and write love-letters to your future best-seller! It’ll give you something to hold on to until the proof copy of your first published paperback is in your hands!

If you’re a writer, would you try making a visual journal? Let me know in the comments. Share this with someone if you love the idea!

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Come nearer, let the clouds gather

around us like a cloak of mist-soft kisses.

Wind carries our voices farther,

summoning a storm with promises of bliss.

I’ve read your name in lines of silver,

etched in fissures, in the sky’s grey edges.

Rain sighs over us, a censor

waving fog, the holy smoke of our prayers.

Come closer, my fearless lover,

Our passion plays across the heavens and

anoints the land with tears of joy.

Feel free to use any line or the prompt to start writing your own. Be sure to tag me so I can see! Thank you for reading!

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Hi! I’m Bre G. If you’re new here, thank you for joining me on my publishing journey. I’m a dark fantasy romance author best known for villain-gets-the-brat stories set in epic worlds. You might know me by my pen name, Anastasia King. If we’re meeting for the first time, thank you for visiting! I’m so excited you’re here in my Forest of Stories and look forward to getting to know you.

One thing you’ll hear me talk about here often: I am nearly four years sober. I wrote both my first two books black-out drunk. Sobriety threw me for a loop and completely toppled my writing abilities. Now, I’m using Substack to explore my sober craft more deeply, publish new fiction, and share progress on my publishing journey. I’m grateful for the kindness and encouragement I’ve found here on the Substack community.

If you’re looking for more information about this happy, little corner of the internet I call mine and what you can expect from my substack, please check here.

If you’d like to get to know me a little better, please visit here. Thank you! I hope you’d like to stay by the fire for a while. If you stick around, I love friendly comments and interactions in my subscriber chat. Feel free to introduce yourself! You’re the reason I’m even here and I’d love to know what brought you this way.

Welcome to The Sunderlands

BLURB:

A Kingdom of Men is pushing the Elven clans of the Sunderlands over the brink of extinction. The mortal counterpart to the God of Death, Keres has the power to stem the tide of bloodshed. As brutal civil war threatens to tear her homeland asunder, she struggles to control her gift without succumbing to a curse of unslakable blood-lust. When her people are attacked, she can no longer hold back. The beast within awakens. Gods know there will be no redemption on the other side of her revenge. Wading deeper into the darkness plaguing her land, unraveling the secrets of her heritage, Keres faces a greater challenge: finding her place in this world or being broken by it. Many seek to tame her and use her as a divine weapon. Including a Knight desiring to claim her body and spirit. As the war between Man and Elf stains the Sunderlands with innocent blood, Keres must make a choice: save her people and damn her cursed soul, or forsake the Gods and her homeland to gain freedom.

READER PRAISE:

• "My absolute favorite part about this book wasn’t the tension or the angst, the romance or the political intrigue . Although they all played part, my ABSOLUTE favorite part of this book was Keres. She is fierce and loyal. She is herself throughout the whole book. Since the first page you learn about her and exactly what she stands for and who she stands with and that never changes. She is a ferocious, cunning warrior until the very last page, but she grows in so ways." Goodreads Review by Ossiris G.

• "This book is absolutely fantastic. King's writing and world-building are magical. The sexual tension was palpable and whenever it ended I couldn't wait to read more of it. This is nothing like anything else I've read." -Goodreads Review, by Em S.

• "An origin story for Keres, we’re only beginning to understand the intricacies of a world steeped in prejudice, violence, and war. The players of this chess game are half(or fully) mad, and it falls to our servant of the God of Death to pick up the scattered pieces to enact justice." Goodreads Review, by Sophia B.

• "The writing style of Anastasia in The Sunderlands is so incredibly poetic yet captivating & action-filled at the same time. In the first few chapters you're immediately submerged in this enchanting world she's built, and you find it nearly impossible to tear yourself away from the words on the page." Goodreads Review, by Katie

• "Just wow... Have you ever read a first book and just knew it's going to be one of your favorite series? The Sunderlands offered everything I want in a single book! If you're into dark fantasy, with an insanely badass female MC, brilliant world-building, interesting plot, banter, smut, magic, and myth - do yourself a favor and READ THIS BOOK!" Goodreads Review, by Carmen C.

FAST FACTS- The World of Aureum Series is an Indie Author Success Story

• Originally independently published September 2, 2019

• Amazon ranked best-seller and most-wished-for multiple times

• TikTok viral prior to and after the release of book two

• Nearly 7,000 units of books one and two sold internationally

• Over 11,000 readers added book one to want-to-read lists on Goodreads

• Book one alone rated over 1,000 times!

• Book one was lightly revised in 2021 with reader feedback, and was reformatted by a wonderful fellow indie author, Zachary James

• Soon to be REPUBLISHED after major revisions—New Pro Editor!

• Book one is the origin story of Keres: morally grey antiheroine, Elven battlemage, and mortal counterpart to the God of Death.

• This series features multiple love interests, multiple POVs, and multiple time-lines across a massive world.

• Two decades in development and heavily rooted in mythology and folklore.

GET A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL BOOK ONE HERE <— click there!

• Genre: epic dark fantasy with dark romance that emphasizes true love, power, myth, and madness. Explicit, on page spice, no fade-to-black.

• INTENDED FOR AN ADULT AUDIENCE ONLY

Page One, Chapter One Excerpt 2026 Edition—> CLICK HERE

Design and Illustration by the incredible Micaela Alcaino

TROPES

THE SUNDERLANDS

• Antiheroine, morally grey, stabby, badass but reluctant FMC cursed with a voice in her head that lusts for blood. Miiiiiight be considered a villain origin story ;)

• Arranged marriage

• Regicide mystery

• Monster hunting

• Meddling gods and deep world mythos

• Rescue the Oracle Child

• Coming of power

• Bully romance/enemies to lovers

• His best friend

• Elves vs Humans - brutal civil war tearing her homeland apart

• Quest for vengeance

HOW TO INVEST IN THE 2026 EDITION

Because this series is already published and readers are still purchasing copies of my books exclusively from Amazon today, almost all related content is pay-walled here on substack. I want to honor my readers’ investment and support of my work—always. Therefore, I will not share this story for free anywhere.

Also… My books have been pirated. Which, on one hand, breaks my heart and robs me blind after pouring my heart and soul into this story for twenty years. On the other hand, it further proves demand for this story and drives me to deliver. If you’re interested in reading this series, please respect my hard work and purchase a copy from Amazon. I and all my readers thank you!

The goal is to have these books in more stores, published in more formats soon!

If you’re looking to support the development and production of the revised novel for republication as a paperback and hardcover, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or founder. This Substack is half the engine of my publishing business.

If you want to support this story but don’t want to invest, please consider reading, reviewing, and if you love it, referring readers!

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IN THE WILD

Images from book reviews online that make my heart happy :)

BOOK ONE QUOTES

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TRIGGER WARNINGS

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