Happy New Year, everyone! I’m surprised to find that my last post here was in March 2025. It’s the first week of 2026, and I always enjoy a good “here’s what I did last year” both for my own records and for you to get a true behind-the-scenes of “being a writer.” Here’s what that meant for me this year:
Nonfiction
- I created 26 (!!!!) episodes of Handmade History Podcast, my niche podcast for crafters. My sister Sonia and I co-host and every other week, we share true stories about people, materials, and practices related to your favorite handcrafts.
- Being a finalist for the Mother/Founder Scholarship–I still can’t believe this happened!
- I wrote the cover story for this issue of Historic New England.
- I did a collaboration with Melissa Galbraith of MCreativeJ: Melissa is an amazing embroidery designer, and I wrote an article for a kit we made in collaboration with Handmade History Podcast which teaches you how to do 3-D embroidery, also known as stumpwork.
- I wrote an article forthcoming in PLY Magazine about the origins of silk & sericulture.
- And another article on synesthesia for the now-defunct absolutely gorgeous knitting magazine Making Stories (sadface–this magazine was great!).
- Finally, I revived my planner for writers–check out The Writer’s Process Planner, undated and infinitely printable for all of your writing/planning needs.
Fiction
- I sent out The Fabric Shop on Front Street, my women’s fiction/sapphic love story about two women who find themselves working together in a fabric shop. One is a sad widow who keeps a spreadsheet to help her act like a functional human. The other is terrified that her boyfriend is going to finally propose. They can’t figure out why they love spending so much time together…until they do. This one is looking for a home. I’m also thinking about publishing it under my pen name…
- …speaking of which, I published Hockey Man! My pen name, Rosa Ruiz, is a home for cute books that aren’t easy to place traditionally. Hockey Man is told in texts between three besties: Isa, Marie, and Claire. Isa, fresh off a breakup with her first girlfriend, finds herself falling for a slightly aloof but very sexy stats guy for a hockey team. She juggles solo parenting, heartbreak, and new friendships and discovers a life for herself that she never expected but really loves.
- I made a website for Rosa Ruiz mainly because the template was cute.
- I worked on my horror manuscript, Mateo Sisters Rare Books & Letters–aka The Letters. This story has dominated my brain for two (three?) years, and I am getting ready to send it out. Two sisters own a rare book store, and their meddling kid sister discovers a recipe for poison in a box of letters. There’s a zombie, there’s sapphic secrets, there’s family drama, and there’s an abandoned mill. Basically this is everything I’ve ever wanted in a small-town historical horror book. It’s got a cliffhanger ending and trilogy potential.
- I also worked on a secret WIP with more historical supernatural sister drama. I’m handwriting this one and honestly writing in notebooks is so relaxing, it feels I feel like I’m cheating.
Looking back at this list, these all feel like big projects, even the articles. The ongoing prompt of Handmade History, plus the accountability of our beloved audience and my own sister makes me waaaaay more productive in terms of actual output. (Have I ever written and researched this much? Not since college.) Theme-wise, I’m on a history kick and still into New England small towns in both my fiction and nonfiction. I also really love the three-sister/best friend dynamic (why is that? oh, wait…[waves to 2 sisters]). Publishing under a pen name was liberating and exciting, and I hope that Rosa Ruiz will be home to more stories. As a side note, I’m currently into Camille Pagan’s podcast, The Career Novelist, and I find a lot of her research and reframing compelling and encouraging.
And, I started posting on Instagram more, both as Handmade History and Alicia de los Reyes. I revived my newsletter and am considering moving to Substack.
Cheers to lots of writing and projects, new and old!
