I always hate to be the bearer of bad news.

I think of that often when I talk about grief, especially after being made an adult orphan at such a young age. Everyone hopes that time heals all wounds, but alas, the best metaphor I know of is that we grow around them, like a tree growing around a nail in its trunk. Our lives get longer, bigger, more complicated but the nail is there, rusting in the dark.

So it is I introduce this fact: Today marks 30 years since my father died, and I woke up crying.

Death anniversaries don’t rattle me too much anymore, not the way they did the first few years. Sometimes, though, they strike unexpectedly. I woke up crying because in the liminal state of dawning awareness, I thought he was alive. Just for a moment. A brief transient moment where I felt the way I did when he was still around and I had the naive faith he always would be.

That’s grief for ya’.

Yes, as a tree I’m pretty well grown at this point. I’m 56 and still figuring out how to “grow up” but I’ve done okay for myself, on balance.

It’s been 30 years, though, and it hardly feels like I’ve taken a full breath since. That nail is still there, pointy and old and familiar, every time I inhale.

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THE CAR!!!

So if you don’t know (why would you?) I’ve been car-less since about 2010. Yes, really. Yes, I mean “not owning a car.” Yes, yes, NO CAR AT ALL.

I know that in Florida that is near insanity, since about 98.9% of the state’s “public transportation” is hardly worth either description. But I made due, primarily because of the luck of living in Midtown Tallahassee, which is a neighborhood sandwiched between the suburbs and downtown. If you followed Keely’s Way, you have seen a lot of it via the photos I took while walking her every day.

It’s a convenient location for being car-less, close to shopping and the public bus system’s main N-S route. I mostly walked or took the bus, only occasionally using Lyft for doctor’s appointments and the like.

Why?

Because cars are expensive, yo’. I did not want a car payment, much less the cost of insurance and fuel and tires and upkeep and…yeah, that. No bueno.

Famous last words, because my friend MaryW made me an offer I couldn’t refuse:

YESSIREEE! That is a 2012 Subaru Outback, and it is MINE!

Expect to see me around town a lot more often, now!

Write-maxxing

Everyone seems to “-maxxing” these days so I thought I’d join in!

I have been cranking out words on Dragon’s Grail 4 (The Pirate’s Witch), Transmigrated Teri, and the cozy mysteries I’m writing under a pen name. I’ve even been poking the bear of my most popular series, a M/M romantic thriller series I write under the name Cooper West, The Guardsmen’verse.

So. Much. Writing.

And also editing, b/c you can’t have one without the other. Wellll…editing, and formatting. My plan is to pull Transmigrated Teri out of hiatus on Tuesday, May 5th, with chapter six, “The Doctor’s Opinion.” I’ll be ready to start posting the next Dragon’s Grail arc by June. And I hope to have the first three arcs for Dragon’s Grail available to purchase as books soon too.

Weekly Round Up

IS THAT NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? Okay, fine:

• Serial Nation is still going strong! More resources, more blog posts, an ongoing chat, and soon I will schedule some “Office Hours” for Patreon supporters to yell at my face!

• The NCA is cranking up for Alt-Grad 2026, and TWO SCREENINGS of First They Came for My College that same weekend. SO STOKED! And also SO BUSY! ACK!!!!

• Bastards of Yunmeng: This CQL/MDZS fanfic is nearly 160,000 words long, at 77 chapters, and counting. This story of a young woman (Jiang Yanli) who is thrust into trauma, drama, and adventures has really taken on a life of its own. I love NOTHING more than the multiple comments from people saying “Damn you! I found this fic at 2am and stayed up all night reading it!” Mwuaaahahahahah!

Flashback

Speaking of Serial Nation, Serial Nation Field Notes here on substack (always free!) features posts that originally go up exclusively for my Patreon supporters. Like THIS!

Serial Nation Field Notes

"Which Platform?" is the Wrong Question

This post originally appeared on my Patreon exclusively for my patrons! I plan to generally post there first so they get exclusive access for a few days before reposting here for free. But if you want that exclusive access for your very self (and to support my work!) please consider…

Read more

17 days ago · 3 likes

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Speaking of Midtown…

Correct me if I’m wrong but I think, maybe, spring has sprung:

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Pretty much at the moment of my birth, my mother decided that she had a writing prodigy on her hands.

The hilarious part is I didn’t actually learn how to read until I was about five, maybe six, years old. Or rather, I refused to read until then. It was a whole fight with the kindergarten teachers to just let me be. Other kids were being coached on the alphabet and sounding out words (this was the 1970s), but not KimBooBoo. I got to draw or just goof off during those lessons.

How my mother won that victory against the school administration was a story my mother told over and over again to demonstrate that she knew what was best for me no matter what the professional educators told her.

No one should be surprised when she pulled me out of the education system and started homeschooling me when I was eight.

My mother’s firm belief was that my latent talent was all I needed to succeed. At the time, I had no other options than to believe her (she was Mother after all), and so began my journey of learning without a curriculum, driven by interests and “raw talent.”

But here’s the thing: she was wrong all along.

(I dare you not to be singing that!)

Mother believed that talent would always trump skills. Since I could learn how to do anything, that was not the important part. Skills were not worth focusing on, instead, once I crossed the Rubicon of literacy, I was let loose to do pretty much whatever I wanted…as long as it was reading or writing.

I guess my homeschooling was like the old Model A advertisement that claimed you could get that model of car in whatever color you wanted as long as you painted it yourself.

(I want to make clear that I’m not slamming on the “unschool” homeschool experience. I think it is possible to raise children in an unschooled environment without simply abandoning them, it’s just what my mother did.)

Since she decided I was a writing prodigy, she expected me to live up to the designation. What this meant in practice was that I wrote. Constantly. Obsessively. Not because I had self-discipline (definitely NO) but because writing was essentially the one structured thing I was pointed at and told: go. There wasn’t much else my mother had on offer.

I filled notebooks. I started stories I never finished, finished stories I immediately threw away, and wrote the same dramatic plot beats over and over in slightly different costumes. I wrote Star Wars and Star Trek fanfiction by the ream. I wrote fake newspaper articles for an audience of zero. I wrote stories where I was the hero, the villain, the narrator, and the love interest simultaneously. Just call me “Mary Sue KimBoo”! I wrote pastiches of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, Anne McAffrey, Vonda McIntyre, and every other author I liked.

Mother looked at all of this and saw proof of her theory: talent. She believed my innate gift was expressing itself naturally, the way a flower grows toward light.

What she didn’t see (what I did not understand until much later) was that the flower was growing because someone had been quietly, relentlessly watering it. Not with metaphysical genius. With repetition.

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There’s a story I love from the book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland that gets at this. A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups on the first day. One group would be graded entirely on quantity, so their work would literally be weighed on a bathroom scale at the end of the semester, fifty pounds of pots earning an A, forty pounds a B, and so on. (Can you imagine being the kid with the pots weighing 49.8 pounds? I would riot!) The other group would be graded on quality. They only needed to produce a single pot, but it had to be perfect.

You can probably guess where this is going.

At the end of the semester, the pots which were the most technically accomplished and the most artistically interesting had all come from the quantity group. While they’d been busy making pots, screwing up, figuring out why, and making more pots, the quality group had spent the semester thinking about what a perfect pot would look like. In the end, they had, as Bayles and Orland put it, “grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

Doing the thing, it turns out, is how you get good at the thing. Not thinking about the thing or waiting until you feel ready for the thing. The thing itself is the teacher.

My mother accidentally made me make ten thousand pots.

She thought she was nurturing a gift. And maybe she was, a little? I’m not here to argue that aptitude doesn’t exist at all, because I think it does. Some people do seem to take to certain skills more naturally than others. But aptitude without volume is just potential sitting on a shelf gathering dust. It doesn’t become skill until it gets used, over and over, until you’ve worn grooves into it. Then, and only then, does it become talent.

This is the thing I want to tell people when they compliment my writing and use the word talented, as if what they’re seeing is something I was simply born with, a coat I arrived wearing. It’s a kind thing to say but it quietly erases all the pots.

What I know now, looking back, is that talent was never the engine. Obviously I had a spark of something which was the thing that made writing feel interesting enough to keep doing it over the course of decades, but the engine was always the work itself.

If you’re a writer (or an artist, or a musician, or anyone trying to get better at a thing you care about) the best thing I can tell you to do isn’t to wait for your talent to show up or to sit with a blank page until something perfect emerges. It’s to make the pots. Write the bad first draft. Finish the messy story. Then write the next messy story.

Then, start the next one.

You don’t need to be talented to begin. You just need to begin, and then keep going.

Your talent, it turns out, takes care of itself.

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It’s been a few years since I created the Deck of Life. Not that it existed in any format outside of my scrivener file for it, but it was there…haunting me…

To cut through the mystery: it is a card deck designed to help people accomplish daily tasks in a way that is engaging and non-threatening. It’s not quite full-on gamification, since you can’t score points or anything, but more in line with oracle or tarot card decks. The cards you pull determine (or gently suggest) your goals for the day, and there is no penalty for not hitting the mark. You just do over the next day.

What does that actually mean, though? Well, here’s a visual aid from the brand new website!

As you can see, there are different suits, such as “Peony” (hearth & home) and “Crown” (spirit & mind). There are six suits to chose from, which I designed to cover all aspects of life.

What is the point?

This is for anyone with any form of executive dysfunction, from mild to extreme. To be honest, that is most of us at one point in our lives or another. Someone who “has it together” can fall apart under the pressure of stressful events, even if they are good ones. From births to deaths, weddings to divorces, good jobs and bad jobs—we’ve all been at a stage in our lives where simple life tasks are hard to keep up with.

It was during one such period of life that I thought of this whole thing.

I was still working at FSU and deeply unhappy there. While I adored my colleagues and the students I worked with, the politics and corporatization of the school made it a very toxic environment. I was also trying to re-launch my author career, write, and start a “side hustle” to supplement my incredibly under-performing salary.

I stood on a street corner, walking Keely (RIP), feeling so overwhelmed I did not even want to go home (which Keely would have been fine with, she loved long walks!). I thought, “I wish there was a way to just pick a chore from a card deck and do that. Then I would not have to decide what to do next.”

My whole entire brain came to a screeching halt, and my very next thought was, “why not a card deck?”

The idea hit me almost fully formed. I went home, opened scrivener, and started outlining the deck, writing out the tasks, and creating the foundation for what will eventually become a full guidebook.

Now, a Website!

It stalled on the money front. I wanted a physical product to sell, but had no capital to invest. I considered Kickstarter to crowdsource it, but was unfamiliar with the process of creating a campaign. Normally that wouldn’t stop me, but I also knew I did not have enough social media traction to get people to support it.

And there it sat.

Until now!

Honestly, I knew what I wanted the website to look like and how it would function, but again, I did not have the money to hire programmers to build it. Everything seemed to be conspiring against me!

Then along came Claude.

Look, I know some of you reading this hate A.I. with the loathing of a thousand suns. You do you. I find it extremely helpful for project management and brainstorming and, now, website development. I outlined what I wanted, how I wanted it to look, what I wanted it to say, and how it would function. A few trials later, the website exists!

It’s early days yet, but I love that FINALLY the Deck of Life is available to people. Eventually, there will be a kickstarter so I can produce the actual cards, and hopefully the guidebook as well.

I invite you to try it out! We all need a bit of guidance now and again!

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Yes, Really

About a week ago I came down with something that was maybe norovirus or something like it. I didn’t get a fever or body aches just, uh, intestinal upset. The intestines, they were displeased and let me know it! Knocked me out for a day or so and I thought I was on the mend.

And then the coughing started.

The past four days have been me fighting with my respiratory system about breathing. Ughhhhhh. I’m feeling better and coughing less, at least, and hope this is the upswing. If I have to go to urgent care again I will be cussing the whole way.

Serial Nation!

It’s growing! My free webinar last week was well attended and I have gotten great feedback on it. I also got the feedback from my AuthorNation 2025 presentation, and it was glowing.

I am always so happy when I am sharing the information and systems I have discovered!

I’ll being doing the free webinar again soon, and plans for the cohort are underway!

Website: the hub of what is going on!

Patreon: mostly content for members, including downloadable resources, webinar recordings (soon!), office hours with me monthly, and more! But fear not, membership is supper affordable, with either a $5 or $15 level.

Serialization Launchpad: THE COHORT YOU NEED! Well, you need it if you have been holding back on starting to post your serial or serialize your novels. Four weeks of homework, feedback, and support from me, the person who (literally) wrote the book on serials and serialization! The first cohort is planned to launch mid-March! Subscribe to Field Notes on substack, or sign up for my “PSA” newsletter.

Serial Nation Field Notes

KimBoo York's official newsletter for Serial Nation Academy! This is the public-facing side of my community of authors who are interested in learning more about writing serials, serializing their stories, and incorporating the reader-subscription model.

By ☕ KimBoo York

And Now a Word from Our Sponsor

As many of you know, I work part-time for the Novo Collegian Alliance, Inc., which is the 501(c)(3) independent alumni association for New College of Florida graduates. If you don’t know, my alma mater was taken over by the fascist forces of Gov. DeSantis wayyyy back in Jan. 6, 2023.

And a film crew was there.

The documentary movie First They Came for My College premiered this past weekend at the storied True/False film festival. Co-produced by alumni, made by a well-respected director, and featuring both students and faculty of the school, the film received standing ovations and has been reviewed by The Guardian and The New Yorker.

It is making the film festival circuit for now, but please help spread the word by watching the trailer and sharing it with anyone you know who is as horrified by these attacks on higher education as we are:

Flashback

I talk a lot about discovery writing, aka “pantsing,” mostly because that’s my primary drive as a writer. For so many years it’s been looked down upon, but that pissed me off so I wrote a book about it. But in the course of that, I stumbled over the idea of intuition and why it can be such a powerful tool in an author’s arsenal:

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A Mood

Saw this perfection of the art form while walking around Midtown!

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What is sleep?

I guess when you decide to start a whole business venture (Serial Nation!) while working part time for your alma mater’s independent alumni organization (Novo Collegian Alliance!) while also updating backlist books to republish (so many books!) while also writing new fiction (Dragon’s Grail!) while also staying fed, hydrated, and rested is…uhm, a lot? Yikes.

Serial Nation????

Oh yeah, it’s LIVE! I’ve created it to be THE best place to learn about the craft and business of serials, serialization, and the subscription model.

There are plenty of wonderful teachers who are out there talking about serializing on substack, and I don’t mean to take anything from their expertise, but I cast a wider net. Is substack best for you? What about Ream and Wattpad and Kindle Vella…oh, right, that last one folded. What does that mean? Are opportunities growing or reducing? What about the effect of A.I. on serialization?

Those are the questions I grapple with, and want to share my insights and discoveries with you!

Website: the hub of what is going on!

Patreon: mostly content for members, including downloadable resources, webinar recordings (soon!), office hours with me monthly, and more! But fear not, membership is supper affordable, with either a $5 or $15 level.

Serialization Launchpad: THE COHORT YOU NEED! Well, you need it if you have been holding back on starting to post your serial or serialize your novels. Four weeks of homework, feedback, and support from me, the person who (literally) wrote the book on serials and serialization! The first cohort is planned to launch mid-March! Subscribe to Field Notes on substack, or sign up for my “PSA” newsletter.

Serial Nation Field Notes

KimBoo York's official newsletter for Serial Nation Academy! This is the public-facing side of my community of authors who are interested in learning more about writing serials, serializing their stories, and incorporating the reader-subscription model.

By ☕ KimBoo York

Weekly Round Up

IS THAT NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? Okay, fine:

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 3: The Dukes of Odwego: CHAPTER 14 HAS POSTED! The adventures of Astra and her somewhat baffling array of companions (the Fellowship of the Ring, they are not) continues!

• The NCA has been busy, too. If you are as concerned about the situation in higher ed as we are, and if you want to support the actual New College of Florida community, buy our merch and help support us!

• Deck of Life has launched! I know, I know, you have no idea what this is. That’s okay, I haven’t talked about it much. That’s going to change over the next few months as I gear up for a kickstarter for the physical card deck, but in the meantime, you can use it now with this interactive website!

• Skeptic’s Inspiration IS BACK! I have re-jiggered it to be an interactive webpage where you can get a random inspiration daily. It will eventually be ad-supported so the more you visit it, the more you support me! Yes, there will be a book, but yo’, I’m busy. Soon, I promise!

Flashback

Speaking of Vella, I wrote this last year and upon reviewing it, I note that I’m still right about everything.

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Art or Detritus?

You never know, but I love finding things like this when I’m out and about for my morning walk:

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Greetings from the Frigid Tundra

By which I mean, North Florida. It’s noon and the temp is just 35°F, which isn’t terrible but only if you are a polar bear. We even got snow flurries!

I mean, last year we got actual piles of snow, which was surreal:

Oh no, I’m OLD

There seems to be a trend these days of GenX getting their nostalgia on. We’re an odd-one-out generation, usually forgotten and often maligned. And now, we’re also old.

Like most generations, we’ve got the good (alt rock) and the bad (preppies/yuppies), and we were the last generation who genuinely believed in the “American Dream,” even if we mocked the status quo of it all with cynicism that was liquored up and lacquered down. Oooof, did we learn the hard way.

But damn, we were good at zines! Bitch Rag defined the club scene of Orlando at the time, and was only the top tier of a slew of zines that appeared, floated around, and disappeared.

AND WE’RE BACK! A friend sent me a link to a new print-only GenX zine, GEEZER. Immagonna sign up. Maybe send them an actual paper check, for the vibes.

Weekly Round Up

I bet you forgot I do other things. I DO! First, the super big news: Serial Nation Academy has officially launched! I’m still fleshing it out but you can keep up with developments by subscribing—especially if you are interested in my Serial Nation Academy Cohort in March!

Serial Nation Field Notes

KimBoo York's official newsletter for Serial Nation Academy! This is the public-facing side of my community of authors who are interested in learning more about writing serials, serializing their stories, and incorporating the reader-subscription model.

By ☕ KimBoo York

• Dragon’s Grail Arc 3: The Dukes of Odwego How bad am I at marketing? So bad that CHAPTER 11 HAS POSTED and this is probably the first you’ve heard about it. The adventures of Astra and her somewhat baffling array of companions (the Fellowship of the Ring, they are not) continues!

• My part time job with the NCA takes up a chunk of time every week, and I need to talk about it more. The Novo Collegian Alliance is a 501(c)(3) created by and for the New College of Florida community. Launched on the heels of the hostile right-wing takeover of my beloved alma mater, it is completely independent of and unaffiliated with the current loathsome administration. Buy our merch and help support us!

• Shop of York: My shopify store has been updated! I moved over and closed my unsuccessful etsy shop, which was mostly fun and funny digital downloadable poster designs I come up (usually while in the shower so you know they’re great!). Eventually, I will have a lot more products there, including print versions of my books you can order directly from me! So go subscribe/follow to stay up to date!

Flashback

I posted this one recently on Notes because a great blog by reminded me of my own circuitous route to becoming a “professional author.” It’s both a cautionary tale and a statement of liberation!

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The Times are Changing

I like to believe for the better, but we are really in the midst of trying times. Stay strong, stay connected, and stay true to the ideals of our Constitution.

Thanks for reading The York Hoard!

Please subscribe to have this dumped in your inbox every week, and also check out the House of York, where you can find more information about all my projects: fiction, non-fiction, podcasts, books, and coaching!

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For years and years at the start of January, my friends and I have subjected ourselves to the popular visualization practice of “imagine where you want to be in five years.”

We all know that as an aspirational goal, that vision is something that may or may not be realized. Most of the time, plans get derailed due to “Life Happens,” but despite that it has generally been a good exercise to work through. Looking past the immediate moment is a crucial step in planning how we spend our time and plan our days, weeks, months. It is very necessary.

After decades of a few hits and many misses, though, it feels mostly pro forma, something we do by rote at the start of every new year. Personally, my goal changes flavor but never substance: financial stability, owning my own home and a nice used car, moving out of Florida, getting another rescue dog or two. Basic shit, as they say, and while I’m closer to those goals than ever before, it’s still a work in progress.

This year, though, a new question hit me like a meteor, and has profoundly changed not just my outlook but my plans and my goals. This question gets at the heart of being a writer and a storyteller, and digs its hook deep into my soul:

What do I want to have had written in five years?

What of my own work do I want on the shelf behind my desk? What stories do I want people talking about? Which of my (very many) story ideas are the ones I want to know are completed when look back in five years?

When the question first appeared in my mind, it was so shocking I had to sit in silence for a few minutes. I have, of course, given thought to what I want to publish, and what I want my author career to look like over the years. That part isn’t new.

What this question tears away though is that layer of “should” that has always weighed down my goals. I should write to market. I should publish X number of books a year. I should write X amount of words every day/week. I should focus on this or that metric, this or that trend, this or that income.

The difference is that all those “shoulds” are external goals, while asking myself what future!me wants to have written when I look back is internal.

This isn’t saying those external goals are not important if you want to make a living as a writer. Those “shoulds” are solid advice which have served many, many successful authors well over the years.

But in the end, for me at least, the question “Where do you want to be in five years?” rests on those externalities. It doesn’t speak to me as a storyteller.

What do I want to have had written in five years?

I now have a short list of the six writing projects which are the most important to me as a writer. These are the ones I want to see on my bookshelf in five years. They will not be perfect (nothing is!) and they might not be exactly what I envision today, but they will exist. I am writing them now, today, and tomorrow.

Whatever else I want to do and need to do must fit in around them. Whatever goals I have in other areas of my life have to make room for those stories.

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Here’s a fun question for every author who spends too much time staring at the “keywords” box on Amazon: what exactly is metadata, and why should you care?

Okay maybe it’s not that fun, but it is important!

Most writers think metadata begins and ends with categories and keywords for Amazon, or maybe BISAC codes if you’re feeling fancy. But metadata is a bit like an iceberg: what you can see above the surface is only a small fraction of what it actually does. And, like icebergs, it can either keep your boat afloat… or take it down.

Before you panic, take a deep breath! As a librarian, I studied things like taxonomies, metadata, paratext, cataloguing, and other obscure but incredibly important elements of information technology. I know just how complicated and arcane those topics can be, but I’m here to simplify it for you!

No, you won’t have to memorize schema.org fields (IYKYK!). You just need to know how metadata and paratext work together. They are simply two halves of the same coin.

The Basics

Metadata and paratext overlap in content, but not purpose. The title of a book, along with the author, the genre, and the blurb, are all important bits of information that can function as both.

Metadata is structured information about a thing, designed primarily for systems, not humans. The title and other data (along with the ISBN, tags, publication date, and more) let the system know what your book is and where it belongs. Metadata is functional.

Paratext is the interpretive framing that surrounds a work and shapes how humans experience it. It tells potential readers what they will feel if they read the book. So, yes, the title and the blurb and the writer and the cover are all paratext, too, but remember: the purpose of paratext is narrative.

Two Jobs for One Book

Think of your book like a job applicant. Metadata is its résumé: organized facts and descriptors that tell the algorithm (or librarian, or bookstore database) what it is: title, author, keywords, categories, ISBN, file type, page count, etc. All very tidy and measurable.

Paratext, on the other hand, is the cover letter and the outfit your book wears to the interview. It’s the tone of your back-cover blurb, the emotional atmosphere of your cover design, the tagline that whispers “you want to read me.” If metadata says “This is a fantasy novel set in an alternate Victorian England,” paratext says “Come wander the gaslit streets with a heroine who can outwit the devil himself.”

See? Same content. Different job.

Why This Matters for Writers

Because the way your book finds readers is not the same as how it keeps them.

• Metadata is all about visibility. It feeds the search engines and recommendation systems that decide what readers see. It’s all about how your book functions within a massive, impersonal ecosystem of algorithms, classification, and databases. That’s the brain: metadata.

• Paratext is about persuasion. It shapes the reader’s expectations, mood, and sense of whether this story belongs to them. How does your book make a reader feel when they encounter it? What’s the atmosphere, the promise, the allure? That’s the heart: paratext.

Confusing one for the other can sabotage both.

You can have flawless metadata that makes your book discoverable, but if the paratext (cover, blurb, description) doesn’t emotionally connect, readers will scroll right past.

Conversely, you can have dazzling design and a killer tagline, but if your metadata is vague (“General Fiction,” “Fantasy”), nobody is going to stumble across it in the first place.

And here’s the super annoying truth: one doesn’t work without the other. Metadata might get your book in front of 10,000 readers, but your paratext is what convinces some of those people to click “Buy.”

Making This Work for You

You don’t need to become a metadata specialist (that’s MY job!) but you do need to treat your metadata fields and paratext elements as part of one coherent reader experience.

When you’re updating your book details, pay attention to:

• Keywords and categories: Are they accurate and specific? Do they reflect the story’s actual audience, not just a dream market?

• Title and subtitle: Do they include natural language cues readers might actually type into a search bar?

• Blurb and jacket copy: Do they echo the mood implied by your cover art and reinforce what your metadata claims the book is?

• Series or author branding: Does your metadata reinforce continuity? Does your paratext carry an identifiable tone or promise that makes readers recognize you at a glance?

The Takeaway

Metadata and paratext are not separate worlds, they’re partners:

• Metadata helps your book get found.

• Paratext helps your book be chosen.

And both are, ultimately, part of your storytelling craft. Your story starts long before a reader opens it to the first page, often as early as when potential readers see a thumbnail image of your cover while scrolling Amazon on their lunch break. How did they find it, and what’s the author promise?

Get that part right, and the algorithms will be happy. But more importantly, the readers will be, too.

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This is it!

The online posting of The Skeptic’s Inspirational entries was a year-long project to share the daily catalysts, insights, and reflections in a simple, convenient-to-read way online. By that measure, it was a total success! It did not garner many followers, but I think that was due to my lack of promoting it more. (Ugh. Marketing. Well…you see my problem…)

But it’s not a project I plan to repeat. Instead, as you probably already know, I’ve moved forward with publishing The Skeptic’s Inspirational in book form and, eventually, as a workbook.

It’s a project that has been decades in the making.

Long ago I dreamed of creating a book that would help people deal with their daily lives in a supportive, encouraging way. At first I focused on inspirational quotes, then shifted to organizing entries by themes. Eventually, I abandoned most of the quotes and decided to mix up the themes throughout the year instead of doing months or weeks on specific ones.

Which is to say, the original idea went through a lot of changes before arriving in the final form(s) you have enjoyed reading over the course of 2025.

But that took nearly 20 years, believe it or not. I came up with the idea back in 2005, right after I made my big move from Orlando to Tallahassee. Suffering from the catastrophic impact of the 2004 hurricane season on Florida, I was desperately searching around for comfort, support, and inspiration as I went about trying to rebuild my life and save my (doomed) marriage.

Prayer books, daily devotionals, self-help journals…I tried so many things. Some of them worked a little, and I really loved the format of the daily devotionals I found. However, I wanted something less devotional and more philosophical, a daily source of insights and thought-provoking questions that were not steeped in one specific religion, spirituality, or philosophy (Stoics, I appreciate you! But we are not the same!).

There are plenty of nonreligious daily inspirational calendars out there, to be sure. In fact, many years ago, my Aunt Sheila gave me a flip book that was, basically, a “year of feminism” filled with quotes by feminists, which I kept on my various work desks for so long that it fell apart. So, I understood that my idea for a “skeptic’s inspirational” was not ground-breakingly unique. Yet, for all of that, I could not find anything similar anywhere I looked.

I wanted something that was not overtly spiritual or religious, but also not overtly anti-spiritual or anti-religion. My goal was to create a humanity-focused “devotional,” one that people of any faith or philosophy—or lack thereof—could use comfortably. Religious people could use it to supplement their morning prayers, for instance, while stalwart atheists could use it on its own.

Since I could not find it, I decided to make it. And then I figured out why it was not something that had been done before.

…it was a challenging project, in other words. insert LOLSOB meme here ahahaha

But I did it, and now it’s DONE!

Thank you so much for being on this journey with me. Knowing that people have read these entries and found value in them means so, so much to me. I am so grateful!
Thank you, and I hope you have a fantastic 2026!

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Hope is the spark that lights every new beginning.

Insight

As the final page of the year turns, hope becomes both a mirror and a compass. It reflects how far you’ve traveled through challenges faced, lessons learned, and victories earned and it guides you forward into the yet-unwritten future. Hope isn’t just optimism; it’s a quiet, powerful belief in possibility and progress. No matter how uncertain or daunting the path ahead may seem, hope invites you to take the first step, trusting in your capacity to adapt, grow, and thrive.

The close of a year isn’t just an ending, it’s a turning point, a moment of transition where you can pause to honor your journey while setting your sights ahead. And as this journey comes full circle, Day 1 awaits you, not as a reset but as a renewal. This cycle of intention, effort, and reflection continues, showing that every first step is an opportunity to build something brighter, stronger, and more meaningful than before.

Reflection

What intentions will you carry into the coming year? As you begin again with renewed energy and purpose, how can you honor both how far you’ve come and the possibilities that lie ahead?

Confused about The Skeptic’s Inspirational? Start HERE!

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Hope reminds us that transformation is always possible.

Insight

Looking back on this year, it is natural to see both victories and challenges. Hope asks you to hold onto all of it as evidence of your potential to grow and transform. No matter what lies behind you, the year ahead is an open canvas, ready for you to design. Hope transforms setbacks into wisdom, pain into resilience, and dreams into action.

As the new year arrives, trust in your ability to continue evolving with curiosity, gratitude, courage, optimism, and strength.

Reflection

How can you use what this past year has taught you to move forward with intention and hope?

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The smallest steps can begin the greatest journeys.

Insight

The turning of the calendar can feel like a fresh start, but it can also feel overwhelming. Instead of focusing on everything you want to accomplish at once, remember that every journey begins with a single step.

Hope shines brightest when you allow yourself to just start, whether that means reaching out for support, embracing curiosity, or taking one courageous action toward your goals. Renewal, success, and happiness all grow from the small, consistent efforts you begin today.

Reflection

What is one small, hopeful step you can take right now to begin building the life you want in the year ahead?

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Hope is contagious, and when shared it ripples outward, inspiring action and resilience.

Insight

As the year ends, remember that you are never walking this journey alone. Our connections—with friends, family, and communities—are the scaffolding that allows hope to grow. By sharing encouragement, support, and compassion, we create a collective spirit of optimism that strengthens everyone. The future becomes brighter when we help each other carry its light forward.

Reflection

Who has helped you hold onto hope this year, and how have you offered it to others? How can you continue building this shared strength in the year to come?

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What Up?

For the past two weeks I’ve been house sitting for a couple of friends who went to London for the holidays. Their home is in a rural area of northern Florida, and while it’s not too remote (there is a Publix just a few miles away, thank goodness!), it feels like it at night without the usual light and sound pollution I’m used to in Tallahassee. That was definitely an adjustment!

I often do a year-end “retreat” where I pull back from engagement across all channels, including IRL, to meditate and rest and do some self reflection. Since I was going to be here anyway, I decided my retreat would be in the woods this year! I have to admit I did not quite get in as much meditation and yoga as I planned, but I took a lot of naps and sat around drinking coffee in the morning on the porch, watching the woods come alive as the sun rose. Win/Win!

Here is a bit of old Florida I captured on a walk down one of the dirt backroads around here. Yes, this is what December is like for us, although it was a frigid 55°F!!!!

What Now?

As I discussed in my previous post, Scary Questions and Big Plans, I’ve been wrestling with and juggling a lot of ideas for 2026. The planning continues, big and small, although my goal is very simple: financial stability. I know, I know, “simple but not easy.”

My friend and I have been working on a “Creative Compass” worksheet she came up with (I hope to convince her to share it with y’all!) and the hardest part for me was, ironically, the quarterly planning. As a former project manager it is so ironic that when it comes to my own plans, I tend to overload unrealistically.

There is just SO MUCH I want to do!

But I need firmer foundations in place. So, I’m working on that.

MORE COMING AT YOU SOON!

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A hopeful vision shapes a brighter reality.

Insight

The stories you tell yourself about your future are powerful. If you envision a year filled with struggle, doubt, or fear, you risk creating that exact experience. But if you create a hopeful, compassionate vision of what lies ahead, you begin shaping your reality to reflect it.

This practice is not about ignoring difficulties, it is about choosing to believe in progress, growth, and meaningful change. Hope gives you permission to dream big and pursue your goals with enthusiasm and persistence.

Reflection

What hopeful vision can you create for yourself as you move forward?

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Gratitude and hope work together to create a mindset filled with both appreciation and anticipation.

Insight

As you look back on the year, take a moment to find gratitude for everything: the joys, the struggles, and the lessons. Gratitude shifts your focus toward what you have gained, no matter the challenges you faced. This perspective helps grow your hope for the future, grounding it in the trust that everything you have experienced has prepared you for what comes next. Hope expands when you embrace gratitude.

Reflection

What moments, people, or lessons from this past year are you most grateful for? How can carrying that gratitude support your hope for the year ahead?

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In the west, the liminal time between December 25-31 is when it feels like everything is put on pause or slowed down in anticipation of New Year’s Eve. The holiday season is entering its final countdown and all the other major holidays done and over with (I am, of course, referring to Halloween).

Long ago during earlier iterations of The Skeptic’s Inspirational, I decided that the last seven days of the year should focus on hope and renewal, and that decision has stuck, even when the rest of the project was completely overhauled several times.

Hope can be a dangerous drug, but I think it is similar to salt or even oxygen: critical for survival, but toxic in large quantities. It is important to remember that hope is a motivator, the thing that gets you out of a slump and into action. If all you do is wallow in hope, you will eventually drown in it. With that in mind, what I have tried to do in these final seven entries in the Inspirational is to provide you with the motivation to act on the hope you feel (or find!) as you enter the next yearly cycle of life.

Please enjoy these quiet days… or, if they aren’t quiet, I hope they are restorative. It’s time to look ahead with the courage, confidence, and hope to keep making plans, stay strong, and be courageous no matter what the future holds!

Thank you so much to everyone who read, shared, and commented on the daily entries I posted throughout 2025. This has been a long-running project, which took up a lot of time and energy, and I appreciated hearing from you all so much!

Confused about The Skeptic’s Inspirational? Start HERE!

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Each ending carries the seed of a new beginning.

Insight

The final days of the year often prompt you to think about what you are leaving behind, but they also contain the possibility of fresh starts. Every ending allows space for new priorities, growth, and creativity. Renewal is not about erasing the past, it is about taking the lessons from it and planting them as seeds for what comes next. Hope keeps you moving forward, reminding you that the future is built one decision, one dream, and one step at a time.

Reflection

What ending from this year feels most significant to you? How can you reframe it as the beginning of something new?

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Compassion includes recognizing your own limits and setting boundaries that protect your well-being.

Insight

Compassion does not mean giving endlessly or ignoring your own needs. In fact, true compassion strengthens boundaries, not weakens them. When you practice healthy boundaries, you show yourself the same care and respect you extend to others. This allows your compassion to be sustainable, ensuring that it remains a source of strength rather than exhaustion. Compassion is as much about balance as it is about giving.

Reflection

Are there areas in your life where compassion without boundaries has left you depleted? How can you establish boundaries that support both empathy and balance?

Confused about The Skeptic’s Inspirational? Start HERE!

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