run away with me
I’ve been thinking about getting back to blogging for a while now. I kept waiting to come up with a coherent vision for it, a focus, a game plan. With bullet points and a schedule and a made-in-advance line up of content. After much thought, consideration, and deliberation, I have done none of that. All I have is a whim and a burst of random motivation with which I’ll do what I do best—I’ll wing it while I tell you a story. So this is my catch-up post, my brainstorming post, my “hope I have a plan by the end of this” post.
This past year, 2025, has been wild. Truly a ride of a revolution around the sun. But I have to take you back a little further than a year for the whole story. Here’s a brief timeline breakdown.
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July 2023. A Winnebago passes us on the highway on our road trip from Colorado to Michigan to visit my in-laws. My introverted two-year-old hardly deigns to speak to anyone and has the most severe but cutest case of “resting bitch face” ever encountered; the whole family is talking about it. My mother-in-law’s Roomba constantly gets underfoot and into mischief; even hides under our bed from where I have to rescue it. During a walk in the woods, a vivid image of a pair of blood-spattered Converse shoes appears in my mind. And if you know me, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that I have long harbored an unrealistic dream to abandon responsibility and tour the globe hunting for cryptids, aliens, and ghosts. “I can write a novel incorporating these seemingly unconnected inspirations,” I think to myself. I am confident. Scene set.
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August 2024. I’m deep into writing a manuscript about Reggie, a thirty-something parent. Reggie gets my dream job; investigating supernatural shit in a magical Winnebago. I give Reggie a devil for her shoulder; a menace of a sidekick—Eldi the goat-eating toddler. For balance, Reggie gets an angel for the other shoulder; Calvin—the skeptical voice of reason. The villain of the story gets…no motivation. That’s a problem for future Mira, I reassure myself.
All my characters are like, “Where is this story going?”
“I don’t know….to space in a Winnebago?” I tell them with a shrug.
“Seems like a questionable decision to me,” Calvin says.
“Well, you aren’t driving, so sit down and shut up,” I say.
“Wait, I thought I was driving?” Reggie says.
My villain quietly stews. “The answer has always been there, but you aren’t listening to me.”
I rename my manuscript file “absolute trash.” The second half of the book gets patchier and patchier as I devolve in a spiral of imposter syndrome. Writing snippets of scenes and possible endings, hating them all. I consider giving up the project. But stubbornness is both my fatal flaw and the backbone of my redemption arc.
There are bits of magic scattered across the slog, though. At some point, my favorite section of the book appears in my head. I write it as if I’m possessed by it. I don’t create it so much as it just flows through my head straight onto the page at a pace I rarely achieve.
Then, I finally find the answer I was looking for. The key plot twist that will make the whole book work. The one fact that explains everything.
“Took you long enough,” my villain says.
I frantically make stacks of notecards with plot points, a color-coded deck I shuffle as I piece everything together. I call my mother and spend an hour and a half on the phone rambling about the story. My then-three-year-old takes advantage of my distraction, hides in the pantry and eats a full sleeve of Oreo cookie filling, neatly replacing the soggy cookie outsides as she goes to hide the evidence.
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In September I scrap half my novel and start to rewrite my manuscript.
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I finish it on November 7, 2024. Trump wins the election. I get my first one-star review on the first novel I self-published (that I’m now rewriting; but that’s a different story for another ramble). Self-doubt and “Why am I even bothering?” energy return with a vengeance.
I vow to set my novel aside for a much-needed break before I return for a heavy round of editing prior to querying. If you’re unfamiliar with traditional publishing, querying is the part where you write to literary agents trying to convince them to take you on as their client. Literary agents are then the ones who pitch your manuscripts to publishing companies in the hopes of getting them published. The process is usually a lengthy months long slog of rejection after rejection. I’ve seen numbers like 1% of queried manuscripts actually get picked up by literary agents and then not all of those are picked up by publishers.
Then I hear about Bindery’s upcoming pitchfest where unagented authors can submit manuscripts to the content creators at the heads of Bindery’s various publishing imprints. The submission dates for the round were December 4-6. Remember, it is already November. Now, I’d watched Bindery from their start up. I actually made a note to myself before I started writing Strange Lights that my book’s premise might be a good fit for Jaysen’s imprint, Ezeekat Press. Before I even started writing, I had vowed to submit it—if the timing worked out.
“I’m just going to check the list, I’m not going to edit this novel in under a month. I have 3 kids. It will be school break. We’ve been sick over Thanksgiving 9 out of the last 10 years. I’m just going to check the list.”
Jaysen is on the pitchfest list.
“This is the ideal time to speed edit a nearly 100-thousand-word novel,” I say, ignoring the unmistakable sounds of small children snuffling and coughing in the distance
So, I do that. Everyone is sick with school-borne winter germs. I make a lot of food for Thanksgiving that my kids mostly don’t eat. I stay up too late and let the kids have too much screen time while I live in an imaginary world of my own creation. I cry when my italics mysteriously all disappear and I have to skim my whole book for formatting again. The italics are very important for conveying the proper tone, ok? I pretend I don’t notice the plot holes too big to quickly fix and inconsistent threads in my characters journeys that I don't know how to address.
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December 2024. My manuscript is not fully cooked when I submit it on December 5. One day early. But if I look at it any longer, I am going to chicken out. The manuscript is not quite a month old. I had flouted conventional wisdom to “make sure your work is as good as you can get it” and “get outside feedback.” I knew it was a good story but I also knew I still had things to work on. I didn’t even have time to send it to my mother and my husband for a read first. No one but me had read that “final” version before Jaysen and Bindery saw it. I renamed entire characters only days before submitting and waffled about the title of the project. Strange Lights became the title for sure, minutes before submitting. I almost didn’t submit. But I did. And then I immediately set aside all hopes. I’d had nothing but rejection querying the last novel and didn’t expect any different this time.
“Well, at least the first round of no’s is out of the way,” I say, “and now I can rest and celebrate Christmas peacefully.”
End scene.
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Christmas Eve 2024: We’re celebrating with my family at my brother’s house. Travis whispers, “Hey, want to move to the Dominican Republic?”
I scoff, not thinking Travis was serious. I blithely turn my mind back to the more pressing matters: consuming my wine in peace and making sure my dad doesn’t cheat at card games whilst abusing free babysitting privileges courtesy of my little brother.
Obviously, we didn’t move to the Dominican Republic, but he wasn’t not serious. We’ve always known, with Travis working in the mining industry, that the chances for us to move to a tropical area are few and far between. If I had a nickel for every chance we’ve had so far, I’d have 0.23 Fiji dollars—exchange rates what they are—which isn’t a lot, but it could buy me an onion. And it’s weird we got both our nickels back-to-back. Because very shortly thereafter Travis also says, “Oh, and I applied for a job in Fiji, but I doubt that will go anywhere.”
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Enter January 18. My reaction to being offered a publishing deal for a book infused with parenting mishaps and struggles was hilariously on brand.
With the big kids in school, we had only our toddler with us for a lunch date. It was going fine until the server delivers the wrong bill and my toddler declares she had pooped her pants. As seasoned parents we immediately know this means it is divide and conquer time. It’s debatable whose has is worse in these scenarios, but I chose the toddler and ditched Travis with the bill.
Small note for background here. It’s in our marriage contract (it isn’t really, but it might as well be) that I’m useless and overly irritable with administrative tasks, so Travis is my unpaid and overqualified personal business assistant. He had access to my author email so he could do the logistical, tedious work of my publishing without having to wait on me.
So while I am desperately digging through the contents of our messy car, searching in vain for a wipe and a spare change of toddler clothes, Travis sees the email come through first. I am coming down off the relief of discovering that my toddler is a liar and I don’t have to perform the feat of cleaning a poopy diaper with nothing but optimism and 3.5 dusty paper towels when Travis appears with a “Did you see you got a publishing offer?”
I immediately accuse him of lying. I didn’t really think he was lying, but a book deal is next to the last news I expect in that moment. I had never had so much as a manuscript request in my last querying venture. The next couple of minutes are a blur of excitement; trying to read the email with a chatty toddler leaping around the backseat; and heading to pick up the big kids from school.
Another couple notes of background information here. First, we were parked just around the corner from the school parking lot. It was a short drive. Everything turned out fine. I am a strict proponent of car seat safety. Second, I swear like the former oil rig worker I am, but Travis hardly ever does. So, I take notice when he does.
Anyway, we are driving up the hill when I hear a gleeful “Wheeee!” from my toddler and then a few choice swear words and a “Please, just sit down somewhere,” from Travis.
We forgot to put our toddler in the car seat. In the excitement of the email, she’d been left freely roaming the backseat and was quite enjoying the ride.
Oopsie.
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February 1. I am wondering how on earth I am going to keep myself busy during the “hurry up and wait,” portion of the publishing process when Travis tells me he’s finished up his first interview with Fiji. At that early stage, we are both anticipating at most we’ll be heading into that customary strange limbo for a few weeks; filled with second interviews and research and hypotheticals. And then if, big if, things progressed, months of preparation. Instead, we are hit with a verbal job offer and the realization that we are talking weeks, not months, before Travis starts in the position.
Less than a month to completely upend our status quo. And then I had to keep my mouth shut about it all for months and months. An arduous task for a chronic oversharer.
That’s where I leave you for now. I’ll be back to chatter to whoever feels like listening, about the chaos of the move, life in Fiji, my author journey, and whatnot when I have a moment. I’ve missed this. I might also do some occasional short stories here, or whatever random little projects catch my attention for a moment.
And I’ll be hanging out here on my own page, not ye old blogspot. I’m closing the door on the old blog name too, “Of Moose and Miriam.” There are no moose here, if you’d believe that. There are mongoose though. But fewer mangos than one might expect. And lots of mosquitoes. I begrudgingly admit that it was Travis that came up with the winner. “Of Mozzies & Mira.”
If you aren’t bored out of your skull by my ramblings, go ahead and sign up for the newsletter (right over there ->) and I’ll notify you when I post. And I’ll make sure to keep you up to date with fun Strange Lights news and happenings as it comes.
Thanks for reading!
Mira
