Welcome to the latest Meri's Monthly Musings! Which is most certainly not monthly again, but maybe soon? I have been working on series stuff, I promise.

Unfortunately, it's been a lot of backbone things that aren't easily shareable, so please bear with me if I'm silent on here for a while longer as I work these things out. I included a picture in the banner of the scarves I made my family for Christmas since I didn't have much in the way of writing photos for this update.

Winter Creative Summary:

• Character backstories! Remember how I was sharing backstory moodboards for my main characters last year? I was so confident that after seven years of writing them, this was all finalized. 2021 laughed at me. I think Adair's is the only one that's still accurate. Everyone else has had significant changes to their pasts, so I'll be re-writing those again. While the gist hasn't changed for most of them (except Camille, she's getting a massive redo), there are enough specifics that have been added or adjusted that I'll have an easier time keeping track of the characters if I update these. Their backstories all tie into the second two books in this trilogy, so I definitely had to iron those out before moving forward with the "now." Speaking of...
• Colorweaver (book 1) This book was already getting a massive overhaul because I was combining what had been two books into one. After months of trying to make this work, it still felt off. I'm working on changing the main plot slightly, which branched off into a thousand tiny threads that have to be tied back together because when is writing ever easy lol. I'm optimistic, though! This is the first time I've truly enjoyed working on this book in years, so I'm pretty confident I'm on the right track.
• Flashover (book 2) This one is still being brainstormed and outlined, so the only big change I've made is that I'm thinking I'm going to take Rosalie's time travel plot out of it and move it into its own book/novella with Rosalie as the main character. This means she's likely to be pulled out of this trilogy and that's why Camille is getting a massive redo to her story arc. Otherwise I've been moving more of Dray's book 1 character arc into this book-- this made sense because book 2 is Dray's book. I'll be sharing new blurbs for the trilogy as soon as I get those figured out and written up.
• Worldbuilding. Lots of history, lots of culture building, lots of math (ick) as I try to figure out when events occurred. Some of these ideas are likely going to make their way into worldbuilding moodboards since I'm looking forward to introducing my other two main countries (Montglace and Galanvoth), as well as elaborating more on the Salamanders, the species of shapeshifting light elementals from another world. (My "elementals" are actually aliens, if you want to get technical.) I don't have any species world building on this site yet, but if you're curious, I did talk about imps, light elementals, and shadow elementals on my tumblr a few years ago. I think most of that info should still be fairly accurate.

Spring Plans:

Mostly what I've mentioned above. I'd like to continue brainstorming/outlining the first two books, re-update the character backstories, start sharing more world building, and possibly do some short stories or excerpts? Brain fog and fatigue have been massive problems this winter, so I'll do what I can and share whatever makes sense to share. :)


I'll leave off with sharing a picture of this notebook because it's special to me. My five year old niece, who is the biggest source of joy in my life, picked this out for me as a Christmas present all on her own when she picked out gifts for her family through her school. She knew how much I love notebooks, writing, and drawing, and she nailed it! Rainbows, sequins, unicorns? That happen to match my favorite pen? Perfect! I love her aesthetic at this age because she has the same taste in things that I do lol. I haven't decided what to do with it yet because I want to use it for something special. It's not a lot of pages, so it's probably not going to become a writing notebook, but possibly some sort of journal?

I know I haven't been using anything but Instagram this winter (and even that not too often), but I'll add my links to Twitter, Instagram and my author page on Facebook in case you want to give them a follow. Eventually I will be back to sharing series updates regularly. You can also sign up for two kinds of email alerts. One option will give you a post like this as a monthly newsletter. (Usually. This month I'm not going to bother sending out a newsletter because I don't have a whole lot to share.) The other option will send you an email every time I share content to this site.

I hope everyone is having a good 2021!
~Meri