Hello friends!

Holy cats, another month has flown by! I cannot believe it's October already! How's everyone holding up through this whirlwind of a year?

I have a lot going on personally, but it's all good things! We'll get into it below.

What's in this newsletter?

Upcoming – Events, Timelines, Crowdfunds, Promos, Releases, Reminders... What all is going on? Let’s break it all down!

Current Goals in October – This is the month where everything releases and the events pop off. It's spooky season, so a lot of this month will be centered around marketing and sharing new books!

What I Worked On In September – So much of September centered around Aloe. I've done a whole ton of editing. Let's dive deeper into it!

NOTE: Deep-Dive Topic of Interest - I'm still working on the research for the fair and equitable pricing article, so I'm skipping the deep dive this month. I hope that's alright! I'll be releasing the November deep dive early for followers, and then linking it in the newsletter next month. I think that will work better for how I write these.

What's coming up in October?

Events, Timelines, Crowdfunds, Promos, Releases, Reminders... What all is going on?

There is so much going on this month, between events, virtual events, and releases! It is officially spooky season!

Current Open Commission Slots

1 - Filled - Promo images

2 - Open!

3 - Open!

I'm reopening my commissions through October!

As it stands, I haven't had time to build my new commission restructure, but I do have a few options up on VGen. You can follow me on VGen to see when commissions open, otherwise keep an eye on the newsletter or socials! I will post when they officially go live. For the next few days I will still have a waitlist open for small interior book design things. I'm aiming to have my entire commission structure on VGen by the middle of the month at the latest. For now, you can always just e-mail me.

Releases

October 1 - Uncanny and Uncouth Speculative Anthology - This came out today! A speculative fiction anthology organized by Vanessa Perry at Mythmount Press. There are a lot of heavy hitters with beautiful prose and compelling storytelling involved. I have two stories in it — Sanguivore and Gaps In The Mist. I also worked on the cover! You can pick it up on Amazon or other places.

October 23 - Aloe, Tales From The Night Garden Vol. 2 Aloe is the second book in the Tales From The Night Garden trilogy, and was successfully crowdfunded in June of 2026. It’s currently up for pre-order. Backers got a special early release September 18th, but October 23rd is when the book is available widely!

Pre-order directly from me • Pre-order from Amazon • Pre-order from Kobo

November 16 - Rainbow Lights and Winter Nights — This is a charity anthology that is raising money for The Trevor Project. My supernatural romance novella, Yule Parlay, is one of the stories involved! Only on Amazon; the story will be released as a standalone sometime in 2027. You can pre-order the anthology here!

In-Person Events

October 2 - Brews and Baubles Market
5pm - 8pm CST
@ Il Bar, Kimberly WI

October 3 - Boozy Bookfair
5pm - 9pm CST
@ Badger State Brewing Company, Green Bay WI

October 24 - Aloe Launch Party!
11AM CST
@ Author Apothecary, Oshkosh WI

Virtual Events

None

Crowdfund

Such Sweet Sorrow Crowdfund Campaign Launches October 29 - Such Sweet Sorrow is a grief horror, and it is near and dear to my heart. I wrote it over the course of the last month of my brother’s battle with cancer, and the months of aftermath when I was dealing with my own grief and big emotions. It’s a standalone novel, and I’d highly appreciate it if you kept an eye on the crowdfund! You can follow the campaign here now! Also, if you like to support indie authors, there are over 30 other campaigns within The Book Bazaar - many of them horror, and many of them queer.

Promos and Sales

As celebration for Aloe's release this month, Lemon Balm is in a bunch of bundles! Grab it all month at a reduced price, along with a bunch of other indie dark fantasy and horror!

October 1 - 31 - Chills, Thrills, and Kills

A bundle hosted by Rebecca Crunden with 96 items from 77 creators, for $69
Get Lemon Balm in this sweet bundle full of indie authors!

October 3 - 17 - LGBTQ+ Gothic, Fantasy, and Horror Bundle

A bundle hosted by V. S. Holmes with 32 items from 32 creators, for $10+
Get Lemon Balm and support the LGBTQ+ community!

Google Calendar Link

Want to keep up with the events happening, but everything is too overwhelming? I hear you. That’s why I have an event calendar that you can add to your google calendar! Check out the invite here.

Goals for October

Top Overall Goal - Finish Website Transition

This is my top goal at the moment because I've got a lot of events coming up. I'd like to cut some costs in my website, and my current website back-end keeps breaking for one reason or another. I'm switching off of it and to Wordpress to hopefully end the migrations that keep happening this year.

The problem is, it takes a lot of brainpower and I'm not great at website stuff. I was relying on website builders up until this point, and I haven't used Wordpress in close to ten years. Right now I've got a good solid core site built up, but it's very simple. I think I want to try again.

Top Art Goal - Start Such Sweet Sorrow Stretch Goals

I want to get started on the artwork for the Such Sweet Sorrow stretch goals as soon as possible, because I have a lot planned for this. Thankfully I already have all of the cards planned out and I'm not writing a guidebook to go with the tarot cards. I also need to draw the poker illustration, depicting one of my favorite parts in the early section of the book.

Basically I need to switch from writing brain to drawing brain for a lot of the month.

Top Writing Goal - Finish It Fall

I've been working on Aloe for so long that I've lost sight of or shelved multiple other projects. One of the most important to touch on is Such Sweet Sorrow, but I also have multiple short stories that are half-finished. I want to get to a point of having a backlog to shop around next year, so I'm making a small push to finish some of my set aside shorts.

Honorable Mentions -

• The Healing and Scarred Thorn Decks - The rewrites of the book have heavily altered certain details of the story, so I'll need to revisit the card illustration ideas. I'm restarting from the ground up -- which is frustrating, but also ultimately how projects like this go if you start with unfinished source material. I'm excited to jump back into these, either way! I'm tentatively looking at this this month

• Portfolio - I've been updating my portfolio on VGen. I want this completely done soon; I need to get my commissions in order.

• Sprints of Consciousness - I've been thinking about reviving this and dusting it off again. But, I'm going to refine my approach. Before I was just rambling when I was sprinting. Now, I think I want to talk about different things that matter to me as a creative and are actually broken down in such a way that make sense to talk about in a single episode. What do you all think?

What did I work on last month, anyway?

Week 1 - 1st - 5th - I did a lot of editing this week; chapters 21-32 of Aloe, which is a total of 52,713 words! I did little else outside of this; but I also created a book trailer for Such Sweet Sorrow, and some light admin work.

You can watch the video here:

Week 2 - 6th - 12th - Another heavy editing week. This is the week that I went into the larger over-arching issues, re-writes, and last passes over the better chapters. I rewrote chapters 4, 5, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18. The previous chapters 5 and 6 got combined into one chapter and I wrote an entirely new chapter 6. I edited the through-lines in chapter 7, 8,9, 10, 13, 16, 17, 19, and 20. I also split chapter 21 and rewrote the end, and got started on chapter 22. Outside of editing, I made the book cover reveal graphics for Uncanny and Uncouth, and attended the Sip and Story, an event at a local bookish bar to share my books.

Week 3 - 13th -19th - This was another very heavy editing week. I finished editing new chapter 22, and edited chapters 23-33 with a partial rewrite for chapters 24 and 31. I did one last proofread pass, and formatted the books for both e-book and print, and uploaded them to the proper channels. I also did a bunch of admin work— sent off the e-books to Aloe ARC readers, charged the cards for BackerKit backers, and posted the Ko-Fi/Patreon reward.

Week 4 - 20th - 26th - I closed out any loose ends on the Aloe campaign for this week; locked orders and addresses on BackerKit, sent out the e-book to backers, and bought physical copies to send out; posting an update so people knew when to expect physical copies. I also sent out a re-formatted copy of Lemon Balm and uploaded the new format to my sale sites.

I also got back to Such Sweet Sorrow; I re-read and edited chapter 1 of my frankendraft, stepped back and took a look at my current outline to see why I keep stalling. After an in-depth brainstorming session, I figured out that if I move one plot point forward and push another back, then I can marry some of the details a bit better and cut some of the slowness at the beginning. Thus, the rewrites started.

Other than that, I did a bunch of admin work; emails, a hardcover book cover file for a client, got Such Sweet Sorrow's campaign approved for launch, put in some solid work on my (new) website (yes, I'm switching things again; hopefully for the last time), and set up my Obsidian for October tasks and goals. On Saturday I played a MTG Commander game with a bunch of Book Bazaarians for promo, as well!

Nub of the week 27th - 30th - I took a 9 mile hike on Sunday, which was strenuous and difficult and SO very fun! We saw many mushrooms. For work, I did a bunch of admin work— the newsletter, website, and signing up for a few Itch.io bundles, mainly. I also did a social media takeover for an event I'm doing at the end of the week, and got some sketches finished for a commission client.

What were the vibes?

The Good Vibes - Productive, Positive, Exciting

I think that the last month has been extremely productive, and I hit most of my goals without too much fuss. I was able to do some amazing things and get out of the house for good adventures, and I edited and sent out my book! It's getting great reviews, too!

The Bad Vibes - Overwhelmed

Holy cats, I need a break. I've been consistently overwhelmed this month and fairly behind on some tasks, while struggling to keep ahead of others. I've been going nonstop since April, and I'm behind on some things I'd like to have done already, and I've had to remind myself several times this year that I am one person and it's okay if I need more time for some things.

Overall, the vibes have been neutral. One thing's for sure, I need to give myself a break soon. October will be exceedingly busy, but I will likely step back for a week or so in November and let myself do nothing for a minute.

As Always, A Final Reminder —

I offer art services and have my books and merch for sale directly through me!

Commission Me • Shop

You can also tip me or become a member

Ko-Fi • Patreon

If you want more from the community, check out the Discord!

And, if you're looking for anything else — Socials, Pre-orders, info, etc.

Website • Links

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all have a fantastic month!