2024 Author Wrapped 💖⚙️📚
Thank you so much, readers! 💖
Hello!
I hope you’re having a wonderful week! Last Thursday, I had my first ever author visit virtually with a school in Utah because a class had read a short story from my debut, Monsters and Machines, for one of their units. The students asked fantastic questions and it brought me so much joy to answer questions about everything from my writing and research process, my characters, and a touching question about writing with ADHD.
It was more than a little surreal that my first ever published short story was part of the class curriculum, but it was fun revisiting my older work. I miss those characters and that world. I hope to be back to them soon, though I do feel like I left them at a really good place at the end of The Resurrection Experiment. 💖
I loved doing the author visit and if all goes well with the scheduling, I have another one in early 2025. In other news, at the time of this writing I’m just under three chapters away from typing “The End” on my WIP!
Illness (and taking on too much with side projects that had deadlines last month) set me back on my original goal of finishing this fall, but I'm track to finishing by New Year's Eve. Even though that's a perfectly reasonable timeline, I can't help but hope that I can finish by Saturday instead... 👀
Since I’m in the final stretch of finishing a draft and prepping for my kids’ Winter Break, I thought it’d be fun this week to share my 2024 Author Wrapped!
2024 Author Wrapped
Attended 12 events
Spoke on 11 panels
Visited 10 cities
Danced at 4 masquerades
1st bookstore signing (sold out! 💖)
Readers in 50 states and 32 countries 🤯
Top 5 countries: US, UK, Australia, Belgium, and Poland
Top 5 states: Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Missouri
0 days without cat incidents (I love my office kitties, Hazel and Willow, for keeping me on my toes 💖😂)
Drank [redacted] cups of iced coffee, even on the cold days 😂
This year was wild, with some amazing events that I never dreamed that I would experience at this stage of my career. I’m so thankful for all of the opportunities that I’ve had, but most of all, I’m most grateful for the connections I’ve made with readers, authors, cosplayers, and all kinds of wonderful creatives. Even with, well, everything, going on, I truly believe that community and creativity are more vital than ever going into 2025.
Happy reading!
Kelsey
P.S. If you need the reminder, read these:
