Hello and welcome to the first edition of Lee’s Liturgy! Today’s topic of choice is our 2024 wrap-up and 2025 goals!

2024 (and a little back story)

In 2024, I became a published author! I self-published my duology short stories: TEETH TALON TONGUE and BLOOD BONE BEAK.

I had struggled on what to write for awhile, jumping between a few main project ideas over the years. TTT came to me in what felt like a fever dream. The first time I can find I wrote anything down for the idea was 1/29/24, and two days later, I started writing. I felt possessed by a story in a way I hadn’t felt before. I don’t think it was a divine creative moment, but the after effect of tossing so many ideas around for awhile. I had just finished a creative writing course I had decided to take online, and the story I’d been working on needed a huge overhaul before I dove any deeper, so I wanted something small to finish. It was just kind of the perfect storm in my mind where I had a snap idea: “A Prometheus retelling where the eagle and Prometheus fall in love. A fucked up story about cannibalism and love.” (A direct quote from what I sent myself in my discord server).

And over the next week: I wrote the first complete draft. This is honestly the fastest I’d ever written anything. I attribute this to two things: 1) the choke-hold TTT had on me, as mentioned above, and 2) I had injured myself at work and was working light duty, meaning work was much easier and I was working less, giving me more energy to write. I’ll get into this a bit later, but essentially I had the perfect storm of inspiration, time, and energy. And thus, my baby was born.

For many years I’ve known I’ve wanted to work independently. I had originally gone to college to work in video games, but the job market was a mess when I graduated. I moved across the country with my best friend and was stuck on what to do. Then COVID hit. I tried many things, from character modeling to comics to indie games. At the core of it all I wanted to tell stories. Growing up, I did not excel in writing and was not really pushed to improve, instead focusing on my math and science skills. I had always been writing down my story ideas but they were more word vomit than anything someone could read. So I wrote a few shorts with some characters that I had been rotating in my head. They were just one off things I posted on AO3 but I fell in love instantly. I had also started following and reading more indie authors and boom. My dream of becoming a writer was born. I’ve always been a creative person but writing feels right (pun not intended), especially in my little corner of fucked up queer stories.

I’m incredibly thankful and blown away by the reception I’ve received. Especially as a part of Dark Mode’s Stuff Your Kindle event. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I was someone unknown in the community and while I had some favorite indie authors and I knew what kind of audience I was aiming for, it was still hard to know if what I was writing was going to interest anyone besides myself. I’m so happy I can say now that there are many people who enjoyed my story and it’s sequel! A special thanks to everyone who has shared my writing on social media and said how much you enjoyed it! I’m not a crier but every time I see something nice someone has said, I get a little misty eyed.

2025 Goals

My goals are a little nebulous. Some are things I really want to do but it's honestly all up in the air. I haven't necessarily talked about this at length but I do suffer from chronic tension headaches and really bad fatigue (I hesitate to call it chronic as I haven't really found an underlying issue), so I am sort of at the whim of my body as to when I can write. Especially because of my day job. I work retail and it usually drains a lot of my energy. Sometimes I can come home and work, but more often than not, I am dead on my feet and just rest. This sometimes extends into my days off. I would love to say that I wake refreshed and ready to go but I usually don’t. I honestly took most of the last half of 2024 off because work was so draining I really couldn’t do much concrete work. I did do a hell of a lot of planning, which will hopefully come to fruition soon! Now that the holidays are over, work has become less stressful so the plan is to get back to writing ASAP! I’ve already started a more concrete outline for Organ WIP so I’m looking to start real writing sometime soon!

But to go through my goals more thoroughly: Finishing Organ WIP is more likely than not doable. I would like to also release it by the end of the year but this is going to be novella, border line novel length. I’ve self edited (with the help a few close friends) my other works but I think a professional editor will really help with longer form editing.

I want to be more active on social media! I say this all the time but this is also strategic. Over the last year I’ve learned a lot about marketing and I need to be more consistent with it. This includes hyping up other indie authors, showcasing my favorite reads, and just being better at talking to people on the internet! The more I’m out there, the more cool people I can find to support and hopefully, cool people can find me as well! Look forward to more Instagram posts and threads, as twitter is a hopelessly dead space for me at the moment.

I stopped keeping track of the books I read in 2024, because from about February to August, I didn’t read anything. Work was super busy and I was using all my energy writing BLOOD BONE BEAK (which was much harder to write than its predecessor), and I felt bad about the number staying the same. I want to keep track, not to reach a goal, but just to see what I read and what I enjoyed over the course of the year. I usually rate books I enjoyed, but I rarely review. I want to change this! As an author, I feel it’s somewhat… lame to leave negative reviews on other authors works. So I will only be reviewing 4 and 5 star reads. Again, I mostly want to uplift more indie authors and also give readers a taste of what I enjoy to read! A lot of it gets coalesced into my writing, one way or another, so I hope you all would enjoy some of what I have!

I’m on a book buying ban for the foreseeable future. I have far too many physical books on my tbr that I’m forbidden from getting more until I’ve at least halved what I have (and that might take a bit…). Exceptions include: new releases, especially indie ones. I’m not going to stop supporting authors, and most indie releases are spontaneous, so I don’t know when they’re going to drop. I’m not going to keep myself from buying my favorite authors anytime soon. Another exception: books for research. If I find books that would be relevant to my current writing, I can still buy and move it to the front of the TBR. Right now, that’s mostly older texts. Next on my list is to get Goethe’s Faust. Which I guess is a little spoiler for how Organ WIP (and the next) are going.

Start a newsletter! Hey! That’s happening right now! I’ve toyed with the idea of a newsletter for a bit, and finally decided to start it because I was originally going to write most of this in a long Instagram post and yeah … I like to ramble! Sorry not sorry! Also it feels very ~professional~ to have a newsletter. The plan is to keep everyone updated on my writing life. I want to show sneak peaks and behind the scenes of what I’m currently working on. Also what I’ve currently been reading and enjoying! I would like to write at least one newsletter a month, publishing on the 13th, with extras as I have energy or time or want to make! Like especially exciting months!

A little bonus goal that is less of a goal and more something I’d like to do; go on a small writer’s retreat! The last few years I’ve used any vacation time I’ve had to spend with family, as I live very far from most of them, and while that’s great I haven’t really had a good rest. This year, I thankfully have more PTO from my job so I plan on taking some time just for me! With this, I would really like to take a long weekend and go somewhere, either on my own or just with a friend, and really focus on sitting somewhere beautiful and writing. This is completely dependent on money and time. Time is somewhat easier to come by, money… well we will have to see. I’m not planning to do this for some months so I’ll have some time to figure out finances.

Thank you! And a little treat!

If you’ve read this far, thank you! I appreciate your time. I hope this newsletter taught you a little about me, and who I want to be as a writer going forward! I’ll leave some book reviews for next time, but I will leave you with two little treats …

1)TTT is free for download today and tomorrow on Amazon!!! It’s leaving KU on January 30th and I had 2 free days still left so enjoy! A little treat from me to you (if you haven’t already grabbed it). It will be returning to itch(dot)io Feb 1st.

2)Look forward to TEETH TALON TONGUE zines soon! I had originally planned to do them in January but I’m think they’ll debut around TTT’s first anniversary (end of February). This will be a limited run so keep an eye out!