Today marks the 11th anniversary of creating this blog. It doesn’t feel like a year since I was celebrating 10 years of blogging!
To those of you who have stuck with me over the past 11 years, thank you. I couldn’t keep travelling this creative path without your love and support.
To those of you who have stumbled across the blog by chance, welcome, I hope you stick around.
This past year has been challenging on levels that I naively didn’t expect. I mentioned last year that the Big Green Gummi Bear (my husband) had passed away in October 2023. What I grossly underestimated was the overall emotional toll that the previous three years had taken on me. This was something I recognised and acknowledged quite early in 2024. Without getting too personal here, what suffered most was my creativity and my partly written book baby, Book Baby 8. (It had been largely neglected for part of the previous year.)
Throughout 2024 I have continued to write but my focus has been more on journaling. I have journaled extensively over the last few years. It’s been one of my key coping mechanisms and I found myself turning to it again this year as I started to find my feet in my new world. These journals are personal, and the contents will remain between me and the page.
I have continued to grow this blog though and its sister blog the525toglasgow Yes, I’m now a .co.uk and a .com!
2024 was of course a Leap Year and brought with it the tantalising potential publication date of 29th February. I have published twice on this date before and had originally pencilled it in as a target date for Book Baby 8. There was no way that Book Baby 8 was going to be ready for it though, so I turned my attention in a different direction and on 29th February, self-published my first poetry anthology, Beginnings. The date wasn’t wasted, and Book Baby 8 became a poetry book instead of a novel. If you’ve not checked it out, I’ll share the links below. Poetry is something I’ve written for a very long time and was in fact published as a poet before I was published as a novelist/author. Don’t panic- my poems aren’t like the stuffy ones that you might remember from your English class in school.
In late June 2024, I honoured a promise to myself. Throughout the Big Green Gummi Bear’s illness, I would watch the webcam from Rehoboth Beach, DE, USA, the tiny town where my Silver Lake series is set, and watch the sunrise online. I promised myself when everything was over that I would return to Rehoboth Beach and sit on the sand and watch that sunrise and I did! As I walked along the sand with the ocean waves washing in over my bare feet and as I walked along the boardwalk and through the town, I felt as if I was walking through the pages of my own books…and some future ideas began to germinate. These are tiny seeds of an idea, but I am nurturing them for future projects involving the Silver Lake characters.
So, what has become of the partly written “Book Baby 8”? I’ll be honest, it was abandoned for months. I felt that I just didn’t have the words to do the tale justice. I went as far as packing the notebooks away and putting them at the back of the cupboard under the stairs. I started a new project… then felt as if I was cheating on “Book Baby 8”. After a few weeks, I packed the new project away, put it in the cupboard under the stairs and brought “Book Baby 8” back out. I dusted it off, re-read it and re-named it “Book Baby 9” and slowly over the last few months I have been adding to the word count. I owe it to it and to myself to finish it so 2024’s goal has now become 2025’s goal.
So here I am at the start of my 12th blogging year. This year will be taken slowly and gently but there will be more short stories from the Measly Jar of Motivation, more poems and more of my Silently Watching series and who knows maybe a third instalment of my Miracle “Hallmark” Christmas stories too. Over the coming twelve months I hope to rekindle the passion I feel for writing and allow the words to flow freely once more. I know in my heart that they are still in there.
As I say, I plan to be gentle with myself (Anyone reading this who knows me personally- stop laughing. I know I’m never that gentle on myself, but I promise to try harder in 2025) but the primary creative goal is to publish Book Baby 9 formerly known as Book Baby 8 towards the end of the year.
None of this creative progress would be possible without the love and support of each and every one of you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading my blogs, liking the content, buying and reading my books and for having faith in me.
All that’s left to say is to wish you a very Happy New Year when it comes. May 2025 be gentle with you.
Love n hugs
Coral
xx
Beginnings links-
Beginnings – a collection of poems eBook : McCallum, Coral: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
I find it hard to believe but it has been three years since I started this blog.
Coral McCallum 