Saturday 11 May 2019

Spring Update, Writing, Zazzle, and Wattpad

Welcome readers and browsers to my spring update. I’m way late and can’t believe I last posted in November – yaagh… Life is like that. 
It’s May and spring is slow to show herself despite famous groundhog Wiarton Willie’s prediction for an early one but our tree in the backyard is now finally starting to bud. It’s amazing really this renewal considering that our tree has caught I believe the emerald ash borer. This beautifully coloured but deadly Asian beetle somehow came up through the US and is now killing off trees in southern Ontario so we’re looking at eventually having to take her down and losing the lovely shade that it gives our backyard and our cars, never mind the shelter it gives birds and squirrels. 
On the positive side, a beautiful new white Rose of Sharon flowering shrub reseeded into the spot where an ageing English rose bush has finally petered out. Rose of Sharon are very hardy so I’m looking forward to seeing it flourish. 
Through winter I’ve been establishing my new Zazzle shop, Paperie Artemisia. If you’re looking for an outlet for your visual design talents, check out this growing, and free!, platform for designers to create gift items and paperie to sell online. Understanding the back end is quite complicated though so plan to put in some time figuring out how to make it successful. They’ve allowed for an entire category for everything wedding so if you’re looking for ideas for your celebration check them out. Click the link above to see some of my wedding invitation and paperie collections!
Writing for me has been taking something of a back seat for a while. Real life work stress just obliterates my muse. Has anyone else been having a wretched 2-3 year stretch struggling with maintaining decent work income recently? I’m seeing that this will finally be improving for me in a while, thankfully, and writing and publishing ideas are slowly coming back to me. 
How many of you are on Wattpad, either writing or reading? I can’t believe I joined a couple years ago but did nothing about it at the time as it just didn’t fit well with me but now am taking a re-think. I’m definitely late to the party but feel this is the next step for me. I had contemplated opening my own website to sell my novels direct to public but realized that I don’t want to be swimming alone out in the sea (though eventually I plan to do this) just yet. Can you imagine, Wattpad  has more than 400 million story uploads! That’s a lot. 
And Wattpad is continuing to expand their opportunities for both income streams for writers (via ads between your chapters, and an option for readers to pay their fave authors), book publishing deals for authors, and even a road into movie deals. This sounds like a great community to get involved with. Here's an article about some of these new possibilities at Techcrunch
I’m liking this sense of community for the support it can lend, as well as giving me literally millions of new stories to explore and authors to connect with. I’m totally indie but can see that it makes sense to commune with those of like mind in figuring out how to become a successful writer.
So here’s my reworked Wattpad landing page to check out: KRWriter.
The first work I’ll be uploading is my fractured fairy tale, Cursed Ice Prince, which is a take on Hans Christian Andersen’s, The Snow Queen. This has been my total fave forever so it was the only fairy tale I could imagine redoing and I’m filling it with lush Russian and Nordic mythology and visuals which I love.
The premise is, what if the Snow Queen (Anyu in my story) and Kai really take to each other, I mean Really like each other? To bring an elemental and a human together is a challenge but what scope for fabulous fantasy visuals and a story to take you away from the every day. 
If you’re on Wattpad, leave a comment with your link and I’ll be sure to follow you too!
 Have a lovely spring if it arrives one day, dear readers…