It’s high time I share a writing update. I’ve been on quite the journey this year with my writing, and I wanted to share a little bit of it with you all.
If you saw my last post, you know that the chronic illness has been, uh…chronic illnessing. Between that and a slew of other personal circumstances, I entered 2026 discouraged. Really, really discouraged.
With some major nudges from God, I had to release huge plans I had for my writing. (I understand why now that time has passed and I can see more clearly, but boy was it heartbreaking.) And as I had to say goodbye to dreams and a certain season of my life, all while facing the fact that writing or just staring at a screen in general wiped me out, I had a lot of questions. I started writing when I was 9 years old and I got serious about studying the craft and writing consistently when I was 18. Being a writer has been a core part of me for the majority of my life. And here I was in my 30s, feeling like I’d grown in the craft enough to finally, finally put my stories out there, feeling ready to do big things, and then suddenly…I was questioning everything.
Was I meant to share my stories? Was I doing the right thing? Could I do it with my severe physical limitations? What stories did I even want to tell?
The first few months of 2026 were rough, to say the least. I felt discouraged and this awful emptiness, like I had lost myself, and I didn’t know what to do.
But the thing is… The harder life is, the more I want to write. It is my solace. My way of exploring the hardships and God’s truths. The act of exploring other worlds and different people brings me such delight. Stories have been one of my greatest comforts since I came into this world. The idea of not creating stories almost threw me into a panic. And it just didn’t feel like God put this passion inside me to be wasted.
So, doing my best not to rashly throw in the towel, at the end of January I tried writing a short story. It wasn’t the easiest. A lot of days I’d feel so discouraged, as just getting about 500 words out a day was all my limited physical energy could manage. Though I was enjoying the story, it wasn’t bringing that joyful spark I hoped for.
But even still, I was doing it.
And sometimes just doing the thing is the greatest accomplishment. I knew I had to give grace to myself. I knew I had a lot of healing to do after some big life changes. I knew it was going to be hard, but I knew not writing would be even harder. So I continued to pluck away at it, and a little over two weeks later, I had a new short story under my belt.
It was a small win. But it was also a big win, because I hadn’t given up yet. I saw a glimmer of hope and part of myself coming back. I realized that the emptiness I had been feeling wasn’t because I had to give up writing, it was because over the last few years, I had lost myself along the way and needed to get back on track. I had to make big changes, pray a lot, and get back to creating with just me and God to find myself again. I’m still in that process. I’m still facing a lot of discouragement and am constantly weary and have doubts more than I should, but bit by bit, I’m finding healing and am returning to who God made me to be. But, hopefully, a more mature, wiser version.
With this little story written, I felt ready to take on something larger. Spring FicFrenzy was around the corner, and I really wanted to work on a full novel of some kind.
In the summer of 2025, when I was also going through a pretty rough time, I randomly started writing a novel. Well, it was supposed to be a novella, but this is me, and my short things never stay that way. Though this little story did end at just 53k words, the shortest novel I had ever written. And I really loved it. It was a mess. It honestly needed to be longer because the emotional resonance just wasn’t there due to the short length. The character arcs needed much more work. But, despite all this, it was such a Christine story. Dark fairy tale vibes and eerie forest aesthetics and sun-themed weapons and themes of light overcoming the dark.
It kept tugging at me to actually do something with it. So as Spring FicFrenzy was rolling around this year, I thought, why not?? It felt like a great choice. I didn’t want to tackle anything too major. So rewriting a short, standalone novel seemed like just the ticket.
Eheh. Eheheheheh.
“Short” and “standalone” are always my famous last words when it comes to my stories.
I wanted to do a full rehaul of the story. That early draft was very much an exploration and just something I dabbled with. It needed to be completely redone. So for the next month, I worked out how to drastically change everything and even wrote a fairly detailed outline (something this pantser doesn’t do very often). And I really loved what I came up with.
But when Spring FicFrenzy arrived and I started writing, those doubts and questions and even discontent crept in once more. The thing was, I was really liking the story. Again, it had so many things I loved; it felt like such a me story and like I had gotten back to who I was as a writer. Writing each day was hard, but I was managing pretty well. Yet still, there were questions.
On top of the discouragement and major life hardships, one big thing I was struggling over with the story itself was that certain worldbuilding elements were extremely similar to other stories I have that are close to my heart. Between that and other personal things, I was hemming and hawing immensely over whether to drastically change this one again or if I’d have to change my other stories or maybe I should give them up altogether as much as I loved them or maybe I should forget this one or…or…or… It went on and on, and I just didn’t know what to do.
And, as our brains tend to do, particularly in the midst of hardships and the messy season of healing, these questions spiraled back into that big question:
Should I even write at all?
It was around the end of March or beginning of April that these questions were battering my mind for the hundredth time, but worse than ever. I had made significant progress on the current draft of this novel. I had been writing consistently almost every single day, and it was coming along nicely. But still something didn’t feel right, and I just felt so discontent and unsure about everything.
In that moment, I was so close to scrapping it and taking a hiatus for who-knew-how long from writing. So close.
Then.
I had a lightning bolt of a thought. It shouldn’t have been life-changing. It wasn’t even groundbreaking. It was kind of a “duh” moment. But something about this single idea shifted my brain immediately, and suddenly I was excited about storytelling again.
The thought was so simple: what if it’s all in the same world?
That was it. That was the thought. It’s hard to explain to anyone but me why this changed things. But, essentially, it gave me permission to tell a whole bunch of stories I want to tell in a way that makes sense without outright copying myself or giving up any of them or certain elements I love about each of them. Now, I know authors have a brand umbrella and do often tell different stories with similar things. I think that’s great. I’ll probably do that myself. But I had a certain set of stories deeply close to my heart that just…needed to be interconnected. And it wasn’t until that hit me that my endless stressing finally ceased.
I finally knew how to tell these stories and saw a path forward again.
There’s so much more to the story. So many private moments with God. So much healing and praising Him as I have been seeing Him restore things close to my heart that I thought were lost.
And seeing how He can use the smallest things to create big growth. Because this little idea brought back my joy of writing. But more than that, as I’ve been pondering what to do next with my writing and how I want to truly get my stories out there, I have felt so much growth in not stressing over it.
In this stage of my life, I don’t have the energy to worry about what’s popular and standard in publishing or who will like it or not and if I should start publishing with this book or that book. I spent basically all of my 20s and the first part of my 30s worrying so much about those things and wanting to do everything “right” and went through a brief time where I was so unhealthily hyperfocused on trying to people please, I completely lost myself. And I didn’t even realize it was happening until God got a hold of me and pulled me out of a very unhealthy environment.
Now, I just want to tell stories that bring me joy and reflect God’s truth. That’s it. A lot of people probably won’t like my stories. They’re probably going to be lengthy books that don’t always fit industry standards or trends. They may be slow in coming due to my health.
And that’s okay.
I simply want to write books I love and put them out there to reach a few other hearts as well. I have been hemming and hawing and questioning and doubting and making all of this way, WAY too complicated, when it is the simplest thing: write stories I want to write. There’s literally no reason in the world for me not to do that, and gracious is it a freeing feeling.
Again, having this idea of making a certain set of stories all take place in the same world probably doesn’t make sense to anyone but me as to why it got me to this place. But it shifted something in my brain, and I’ve been in a much healthier space with my writing ever since.
From that day on, I happily made progress on this draft I was working on. On March 15th I wrote the first words, on July 4th I wrote the last, and a mere two days later I dove straight into major plotting for the next phase of what will now be an expansive, interconnecting series. I plan on starting the first draft of book #2 come Fall FicFrenzy next month.
And I’m feeling so free and excited about all I’m working on.
So what IS this story?
If you follow my Newsletter or Instagram, you’ve probably seen me talk about it. But I’ve yet to share about it here. SO.
Introducing…
THE FOREST’S BLEEDING HEART
Melantha longs to bring liberation to all. In Mother’s forest domain, beauty blooms in every corner, time and mortal constraints are nonexistent, and Mother’s children can live free. But those on the outside resist Mother’s gift, and when a hunter threatens one of them with a weapon that burns, Melantha risks the safety of the sanctuary to help him seek the truth.
Sorin is plagued by shadows. The shadow of the great forest, ever spreading across the world, looms over his village and brings with it whispers that weigh on his heart. He, his mother, and the other villagers are able to keep the unnatural creatures that creep from the trees at bay with special flowers and foliage that create light, but bit by bit, the forest grows and steals people into its depths, lost forever beyond its impenetrable veil.
When the younger sister of Sorin’s childhood best friend is snatched into the endless woods, he forms a weapon to break the veil and plunges within. But instead of monsters, he finds a world of wonder and a woman promising a way to break the inner chains binding him.
Beneath the growing woods, Sorin must lay down his weapon and Melantha must face the shadows, or the freedom they so desire may be choked away forever.*
*not the official blurb, but it gets the point across
We’ve got…
- A mysterious, enchanted forest spreading across the world
- Special flowers and weapons empowered by the sun
- Dark fairy tale vibes (because this is me)
- Trauma™️(again, this is me)
- An eerie, earthy atmosphere
- A young man weighed down by the choices of his past
- A woman forced to face the shadows
- The determination of a mother’s love
- Hearts threaded in shadows and infused with light
- Themes exploring what freedom truly means
- And characters doing lots of reckless things (because of course)
The Forest’s Bleeding Heart (FBH) is essentially a prelude to a much, much bigger story. It tells the events of something that will shift things for centuries to come in this storyworld. And, in fact, book #2 will take place literally centuries after the events of FBH and kick off what I’m considering the “main” timeline and series. Book #2 starts off a series of stories I’ve also told before but, like with FBH, they’ll be undergoing such drastic changes, they’re practically new stories. THEN, after this “main” timeline, I have a trilogy I’ve written that I plan on connecting into this world, taking place after all this other stuff.
I may be a little insane.
Reader, she is very insane.
But, YOU GUYS, the second I had the idea of all these stories connecting, the second it all just made sense. They connect so well and I am just ecstatic to make this happen.
But because FBH takes place so much earlier than any of the other books, I’ve been a bit back and forth on whether to call FBH book #1 or book #0.5. Especially since FBH has a more old-world setting and book #2 is set in a slightly more modern one. But I may have other stories in between that tell events that take place between FBH and the next official book. So…numbering the series may be interesting, but I think just labeling them book #1 and on would be simplest. I would publish them in a way that, even though they might not always be in chronological order, they would read in the order of best enjoyment.
I can’t keep things simple. 🙈
But that’s okay. These are stories I want to tell, and connecting them all just makes them even more special, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. And I am EXCITED.
I can’t give any promises about what’s all to come or when they’ll be available. I’d love to get FBH out there sooner rather than later. It’s a good starting place because, though it’s the beginning of an expansive story, FBH itself is a standalone story. And I’ve been at this writing thing for a long time and am really, really ready to finally share something.
But right now I’m just taking things prayerfully one step at a time. I’m still healing and growing and seeking God’s will for my writing. But I honestly believe it’s not complicated. It is simply a matter of loving Him and doing what we love in the way that best suits our needs.
So I’m going to go write what I love.
What do you think of my madness of connecting a lot of my stories into a single world? Does FBH sound up your alley? What are you working on, friends? Will you be joining in any writing events this fall? (FicFrenzy starts in less than a month! 😱)
