…I can accomplish anything.

Which is to say I finished Midwintertide last night! And I have a new song obsession to thank, honestly, because I have been listening to Chihiro by Billie Eilish on repeat while writing. It’s very much the vibe of the final chapter of this story.

Not a short story, by the way–officially a novella. It’s just under 25K words.

Which means it’s my 10th novella or novel-sized book finished, lifetime, and my 4th this year. I think that deserves celebration!

I’ll be editing it this week, and then it will go up for Shieldmaidens of Time and above next week–just in time for Midwinter!

This story surprised me, honestly. I thought it would just be a short, cute and cozy Midwinter story about how Ghia and Jules met…by chapter 4 it became a melancholy exploration of the costs of war.

And while I didn’t intend it to be a truly canon story–I thought it would be part of my “author-written fanfic” category, where if it didn’t align with canon in the book series it was okay–I ended up liking it so much I wrote it so that I could conceivably fit it into canon without altering any events of Chosen of Kore.

In fact all that would need to be altered would be a few character interactions, perhaps. So I may be doing that in my second round of text updates!

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Speaking of author-written fanfic….

I had a whole Coffeeshop AU story spin itself in my head with the characters of Chosen of Zarqon. I cannot possibly commit to writing it right now, but I might spend some time on that in the new year.

Is that something that would be of interest to y’all? A silly Coffeeshop AU story about Ghia, Yarrow, Jules, Caelum, Zardria, Anala, Aro, Lares? And probably more; those are just the ones in the story I spun up.

Let me know. I mean I’ll probably do it regardless, but I still want to know if you think it would be cool or not!

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December Goal Check-In

Let’s see how I’m doing!

✨Move all my Goal 1 stickies on the Kanban board down to DONE

✨Write 10 to 20K words ☑️ (@ 16K now)

✨Finish a WIP☑️ Midwintertide finished, check!

✨Finish scheduling Chosen of Kore chapters

✨Start round 2 of text updates for Chosen of Kore☑️ Technically started b/c I’ve made a few new edits to it but haven’t really dived in yet

✨Finish revising Stolen Fire

✨Plan out 2025

✨Plan out Q1 2025

✨Finish a crochet or knitting project☑️ — finished my crochet cocoon cardigan! it’s a hot mess but I love it

✨Eat, drink, and BE MERRY!

I am eating and drinking but to be honest, I haven’t been terribly merry this month. It’s a rough Christmas season for us & it’s hard to be festive and full of good cheer in that case.

Hence why I’m so focused on my writing–it brings me joy even when the world is falling apart around me.

Anyway, now that Midwintertide is done I plan on doubling down on focusing on Stolen Fire and revising it, because…I have a pretty ambitious release date goal. I’m not announcing it yet because I don’t like jinxing myself BUT it would be within Quarter 1 of 2025. 😳

I’m actually really ambitious overall about 2025 but I haven’t finished planning out next year yet. When I have I’ll share my goals with y’all–I’ll be planning Q1 next week so I can take advantage of the co-working sessions Sarra’s going to run in her HB90 Bootcamp.

(If you are interested in taking the HB90 Bootcamp course, I have an affiliate link: https://www.katje.link/hb90. No pressure. Sign-ups for this round close 12PM EST on December 15th.)

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The Land of No Showers

So we’ve been doing plumbing renos in the house and–y’all, don’t do renovations during Mercury Retrograde. Just saying.

Anyway, I haven’t showered in 2 days because Monday was a day where I just…didn’t have time to shower but wasn’t opening my shop or leaving the house so it didn’t matter. Then Tuesday I got up and…the water was off. And once it got turned back on, there was NO HOT WATER.

So my “shower” was not actually that, it was a desperate scrub down with freezing water to take away the worst of the dirt.

Work is currently being done to fix this problem so I am praying I get a hot shower today and not another freezing scrub down. 🤞

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December Free Romance Reads

Reminder, this is a month-long promo with free books from 60 authors including myself–free SFF and Paranormal Romance books. It’s a great chance to find some new authors and reads for December.

Go here to check out the books: https://www.katje.link/sffrbooksdec24

(Don’t worry about downloading Fate’s Promise through the promo–you already have access!)

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Okay, that’s it from me today. Back to the word mines for me!

Wildly,

Katje