Readers! Long time, no talk. How the heck are ya?

Depending on your geography, you no doubt spent the past couple months either surfing the world’s most epic heat wave, or watching your extremities verge towards popsiclization.

Me? I’ve just gone through the seventh circle of hell with my family, which is to say we’ve moved house. Again. That makes twice in two years, only this time we threw in a state line for extra kicks. With 5 kids. During the holiday season. Which is also the end of the school year in Australia…

It was all super fun and totally awesome and something I wholeheartedly recommend to my absolute worst enemies. Seriously, guys. It’s the actual BEST.

We now live in Brisbane, which in peak summer, seems to have the climate of a swamp, but I’m told you get used to it. The coffee is pretty good, anyway.

I’ve spent most of the past couple weeks buying socks. Of course, there was also about a billion dollars’ worth of new uniforms and shoes and stationery, but really, you can just call me Queen of Socks now.

The kids finally started school last week, and in the midst of trying to figure out how to interior design my way around some really—ahem—“interesting” quirks in our new house, I am also deliciously excited by the prospect of putting my writer-poet-editor hat back on.

I know a lot of you made it your New Year’s resolution to invest more time and energy in your writing careers. How do I know this? Because I got queried 600% more in January than in any previous month. If you were one of the folks who contacted me and you haven’t heard back yet, please rest assured I was happy to receive your email and will be in touch really soon!

I also need to knuckle-down and file all the rejections I received on my own queries as it seems half of North America decided to kickstart 2019 by knocking back my work. I am at the point with both my fiction manuscript and my poetry collection where I keep getting feedback like: “This is beautifully written as is and will definitely find a home soon—just not here.” Ho hum.

I am also beyond thrilled to start reading again as I have a bunch of new beauties sitting on my desk that unfortunately were not compatible with trying to keep small children from drowning at the local pool in recent weeks.

So, with that said, Happy February, and here’s to a very literary 2019 from here on out for all of us!

x Nicole