For those of you following along at home, I’ve started doing a morning Twitch stream as a way of accounting for my own daily journaling. I know, I know, it’s a little selfish to do a daily journal prompt about bettering one’s self, when one is really just doing it to better themselves around other people, but I do it anyway. Every morning at approximately 6am EST, I get on Twitch and we settle in so we can then turn around and do a journal entry based on a prompt. If you want to join me, you can. I’m on Twitch.tv/noirladyluck. Make sure you follow the channel so you get the notification of when I go live, even though I generally go live at around the same time everyday. And yes, I do mean every day, that’s Saturday and Sunday included.
In other news, VALHALLA BOOKS has made the decision to pick up Dreamless, so I’m currently going through the edits on that story. For a story that took me approximately 7 years to write, I’m super surprised it makes sense to anyone since I’ve restarted it three times.
Last year… it feels so good to be able to say that about 2020 at this point, I put out several pieces. Several of them through publishers. FALSTAFF BOOKS put out A Doll’s Life in June. In October, MOCHA MEMOIRS PRESS put out both Alice and the short story “Ujima”. It appeared in SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noir. Also in October, VALHALLA BOOKS put out “The Black Rock” in Devil’s Due. For the fact that I spent part of the year shut into my house like most of America, I had a decent year. I’m planning to see what else I can do this year.
In my mind, I have achieved a goal. One of my goals was to become a hybrid author. I’m still mostly self-pubbed. It’s a choice because I’m one of those who is too impatient to wait for someone to work on my stuff on any schedule other than my own. Therefore, I choose to be a hybrid in which I do some work for publishers and other work through my own imprint, SMALL DRAGON PUBLISHING. Last year, I think I only put out one book through my imprint since I was so busy working on other stuff (plus trying to keep myself sane during a pandemic). SHELTER was well received by those who read it. If you aren’t one of them, please consider buying yourself a copy. It’s an interesting little book with the tagline: What if you found out your grandmother’s house was a cannibal? Please do yourself a favor and give it a looksie. All of my books are available through my books page here on the blog.
What I’m working on right now: I’m currently drafting Heaven’s Waiting which is the second book in the Daughter of Calet series which I started some time ago. I’ve had the cover finished for quite a while, but I simply haven’t worked on it. So that’s on my drafting table. I’m trying to find a publisher willing to publish 13, which is by far one of my uglier stories. A wonderful story all together, but it is an ugly, gritty thing that pulls few punches. Knowing myself, if I cannot find a publisher for it soon, I’ll just publish it myself and let the chips fall where they may. I’m that kind of impatient. I’ve said it before. For the month of January, I’m also doing a 31 Days of Short Stories Challenge with several of my Twitch friends. Throughout the month, I am going to draft at least 1K a day on a short story which might or might not finish that day. So far, I’ve only got one which is going to take some extensive extra work and that’s because it’s a modern fairy tale retelling and is going to take significantly longer than 1K to tell. If you’d like to join our Discord to join in the challenge or just to root people on, please let me know either in the comments here or by emailing me at alledria@alledriahurt.com.
That’s it for the update! If you read this far and you haven’t subscribed already, please subscribe so you’ll know when things are happening in my world.