Amy Laurens's Blog, page 14

Extroversion Is A Thing

I was planning for Light And Fluffy Friday Post today, but that’s just not where my headspace is at. Instead of being all YAY HERE ARE THINGS I’M LOVING*, I’m actually staring somewhat morosely out the window wondering why I feel so flat.

* Which, there are many things I’m loving right now but aside from ‘tea’ they are all pretty abstract and don’t really lend themselves to links and so forth?

At least, I was until I remembered that extroversion is a Thing.

Y’all, I’ve gone from INTEN...

Short Thought On Progress

It’s a sleepy kind of day today, overcast and threatening rain, and I’ve had a lot less than Optimal Sleep this week. I’m counting down quite keenly for the weekend… But also, I’m still really excited about Define Good and making progress on writing (although I didn’t do any yesterday since I was focusing on some edits I had due for a client in all my spare time, ha).

I’m not really sure what I have to say here today, this isn’t a particularly premeditated post at all, but I’ve promised to b...

Far More Satisfying Than Hell

Inklet of the week!

Yes, okay, they only come out fortnightly on the 1st and 15th of every month (at least until the end of February because #100 comes out on Feb 15 and IT IS THE LAST ONE) BUT we all know I’ve been neglecting blogging RATHER A LOT by necessity (read: survival) so there are many I haven’t introduced you to AND I WANT TO so here we are.

Today, Far More Satisfying Than Hell, a short little revenge story for all the wrongs in the world that came after a very heavy conversat...

Topical Tuesday

…It’s not really topical, I just liked the alliteration.

I have a bunch of ideas of things that I want to post about after having not posted in so long, but the problem is I keep thinking of them while I’m not at the computer, or my phone, or even somewhere with a pen-and-paper. I’m going to try to do a bit of a brainstorm at lunchtime today to address that, but for now, today, you get rambles

I shall make it up to you though by posting a small snippet of the book I’m working on at the ...

Made-It Monday: Obviously Cake

Welcome to #MadeItMonday, where I post something I’ve made in the previous week, and where you can join in and post something you made too! The rules are easy: post a pic somewhere of something you’ve made in the last week (ish; let’s say in the last month as the hard-and-fast) and tag it. Sit back and enjoy scrolling through all the beautiful things we’ve collectively created, and celebrate the fact that humans can be awesome!

It’s been so long since I did this regularly that it took me a s...

Figuring Out Fridays?

So a year or so ago when I was last blogging regularly, I did Friday videos as a bit of a light-hearted way to end the week. The only problem with this is that I’m not actually much of a YouTube/video person, so I don’t always have weekly content there.

So I turned to pins, sharing a selection of my recent pins from Pinterest for the week. Which is easier to find content for, but is much harder to make accessible, and these days my Instagram stories is most likely to have seen the good pins ...

Am I Doing NaNo This Month??

I realised on the weekend that Define Good, the novel I was working on in Jan/Feb and the next book in the Kaditeos series, has about 50k to go until it’s done. If you’ve been around in the writing world at all for a while, you’ll know 50k is a Special Number: it’s the number of words you aim to write in a month when you compete in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November.

So, like, I could theoretically do an August NaNoWriMo and have the draft of Define Good done by the end of ...

Newest Inklet Is Out And It’s One Of My Favourites…

Moon And Morning came out on Monday, and I am super excited (as always) to welcome this one to the world This is one of my favourite stories, coming out of the lockdown challenge I did back in April of 2020 during our first covid-19 lockdown (writing 6 stories in 14 days). (This means, of course, that you can also pick it up as part of the April Showers collection that came out in April this year.)

Moon And Morning feels very personal to me because it’s set in Canberra, where I live, and...

The Most Exciting Thing I Didn’t Post About

So the next month or two (or three) I’ll be drip-feeding through a bunch of updates on Things That Happened While I Wasn’t Posting. Today, the most exciting of those things: I won an Aurealis Award!

(Somewhat amusingly, the photo below was taken on the one-year anniversary of the book’s release – I didn’t realise that until now.)

The Aurealis Awards are Australia’s answer to the Hugos and Nebulas. You can read about them if you’re particularly interested

So, funny story. I found o...

So I Changed Careers…

Apparently, according to the calendar (whom I mightily suspect of lying, tbh), it’s now August?

Guys, this has been A Year. In fact, it might have been TWO years already so far since January 1st.

I went into February aka The Start Of The School Year full of optimism that this year, this year, it would be the year that I made writing and teaching work together effectively, because I had a System. It’s a great system. I’m still using it and I fully endorse it.

Especially since what it ...