Book Cover Chaos And Figuring Out Projects - Feb. 25th 2025 newsletter
Happy late February, everyone!
One could say that the latter half of this month has been chaos. Specifically, book-cover related chaos (more on that in a later section of this newsletter).
However, despite that chaos, I want to give a big THANK YOU to everyone who ordered a copy of “Refilling The Well,” my debut poetry chapbook, upon its release! A reader or two have already have even reached out to me letting me know that they enjoyed reading the book as well! I’m very grateful for the support, and I’d appreciate you continuing to let other fellow poetry readers know about this book. Let’s keep up the momentum! Also….
2 Nominations For the 2025 Indieverse Awards!
Happy to share that I got two nominations for the 2025 Indieverse Awards, specifically for the categories "Underrated Indie Author" and "Newsletter I Love To Read!"
I honestly wasn’t expecting any nominations in these categories, so thank you to whoever submitted me to be considered for these awards! I appreciate it a lot!
And if you'd like to subscribe to my author newsletter, you can click the button below:
All My Books Are Now Available To Purchase On Itch.Io!
In case you missed the announcement on my socials last week, all my books are now available to purchase on Itch.io! I’ve noticed a lot of indie authors distributing their books through this marketplace lately. After careful review of how Itch.io works, I decided that I might as well distribute my books on Itch.io too!
What Am I Writing Lately?
I drafted another fantasy novel!
The inspiration literally came to me on the same day that my poetry chapbook was released. I figured at the time, to celebrate, I would write a bit and see if this developed into becoming a bigger project…and it did do that.
I also came up with two other book ideas! However, I’m trying (emphasis on trying) not to work on those two too much, as I want to finish the first draft of the above book first.
What Have I Done Other Than Writing Lately?
I gave myself a break from almost everything that wasn’t promoting “Refilling The Well”’s release for a few days. Why?
Because I was feeling emotionally drained and overwhelmed during the week (closer to a week and a half) leading up to RTW’s release. Considering what my poetry chapbook is about, you can imagine how ironic it is feeling constantly “on edge” and anxious when trying to promote a chapbook that focuses on self care and burnout recovery.
Just because I wrote a chapbook about burnout and self care doesn’t mean that I’m an expert on handling these issues. Everyone goes through emotional ups and downs at times. The current state of the world doesn’t help either. It’s incredibly easy to let all the big and little things just get to you when it hits you all at once.
Fortunately, I am feeling a bit better now, though I’ll likely reduce my social media presence for a while (both to focus on my own writing more and for my wellbeing).
I also revised the book cover for my upcoming YA magical girl-themed short story collection “Stay Magical!”
After examining the then-official cover a few months after I deemed it ‘complete,’ I realized there was one major flaw: A graphic I intended to use was blending into the background of the book because of the colours. And no, I can’t just change the colour of the graphic itself- you can’t do this with all graphics you use (at least not in Canva). Given this, I had to use an entirely new graphic to fit the rest of the cover!
In the past few weeks, I also have:
Batch-created social media posts for the upcoming months
Ordered an author copy of my own poetry chapbook. Unfortunately, it did not arrive on my doorstep until over a week after the book’s actual release day.
Updated my website’s press kit!
What Have I Watched Lately?
I don’t have an audiobook and/or podcast to recommend this because I just did not spend any time listening to any podcasts or audioboooks latley. I hope this changes by the next newsletter!
However, I recently watched several seasons of a CBBC kids fantasy adventure gameshow called “Raven.” The titular character leads a group of kids to complete various tasks. If they fail, they lose lives. If they succeed, they earn treasure rings (and earning enough rings can gain them back a life). The kids with the least amount of lives left at the end of each episode usually have to go through a perilous obstacle course called “The Way Of The Warrior,” which barely anyone passes. This culminates in the winning two kids from each week of the show all coming together in the final week to compete for the “Ultimate Warrior” title.
This show aired from 2002-2010. It also had a brief revival from 2017-2018, and several spinoff shows! Based on the seasons I’ve watched so far, Season 2 onwards increased the quality of its production (especially with costumes and props). No other seasons of the show were commissioned since 2018, but it’s easy to find most if not all the episodes on Youtube.
What Have I Been Reading Lately?
With the #BuyCanadian movement going on due to current world events, and consequently a larger push to #ReadCanadian among the Canadian reading and writing communities online, I realized that…well, I actually hadn’t read a lot of fellow Canadian poets recently. My bad.
So I quickly made up for this by checking out several Canadian poetry chapbooks from my local library’s e-catalogue and read them. I regret not having read them earlier.
I also want to ask the following questions: Are there any indie Canadian authors and/or poets reading this newsletter, and do you have a book I should look into reading next? Readers, do you have any indie Canadian authors and/or poets that you recommend reading?
When I think of Canadian authors and poets, many of them are traditionally published. I want to make sure to support some fellow Canadian indie authors - especially since I am also a Canadian indie author and poet myself!
Recent reads include:
“Sun Wishes” by Patricia Storms
“The Wrong Cat” by Lorna Crozier
“Not One Of These Poems Is About You” by Teva Harrison
“Handwriting” by Michael Ondaatje
“I.O.N.” by Arina Tanemura
“Into The Dark Forest” by Liz Flanagan
“Where Shadows Bloom” by Catherine Bakewell
Thank you for following my writing journey!
I hope you look forward to seeing more of my writing process and work. I also look forward to giving all of you more frequent updates as well, so stay tuned for more!
If you have any questions, feel free to email me at clarislamauthor@gmail.com! I’ll respond within 48 hours (except on weekends and holidays).