Category: update

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

1. 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.
2. Being a finalist for the Mother/Founder Scholarship–I still can’t believe this happened!
3. I wrote the cover story for this issue of Historic New England.
4. 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.
5. I wrote an article forthcoming in PLY Magazine about the origins of silk & sericulture.
6. And another article on synesthesia for the now-defunct absolutely gorgeous knitting magazine Making Stories (sadface–this magazine was great!).
7. 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

1. 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…
2. …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.
3. I made a website for Rosa Ruiz mainly because the template was cute.
4. 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.
5. 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!

Happy New Year!

I recently read a newsletter–Spokes and Stitches, a pattern company I admire–where the writer did a round-up of all she had accomplished in the last year. I thought I’d do something similar, because I enjoyed the window into a small creative business. I wouldn’t call myself a business, but I thought you might also enjoy the window into a small creative life.

So, um…here is everything I did that was writing-related in 2021!

• Two craft fairs! I sold DIY Writing Retreat at Somerstreets & Wrong Brain with my sister Monica
• I made DIY Writing Retreat kits, a brand-new product, for those craft fairs. It was fun!
• I made DIY Writing Retreat + DIY Writing Retreat: HOME Edition into a bundle. My first bundle!
• I did not make a planner for 2022. It’s hard for me to imagine planning right now, but things change. There are a lot of lovely planners out there if you want one that’s writing-specific.
• Wrote an article for the Craft Industry Alliance
• Published a short story in two parts on Moments Between Literary
• Wrote an essay for Medium on worship music (evangelical Christianity, why can’t I quit you?)
• Sent 8 newsletters (my promise is roughly monthly, and I think I delivered?)
• Wrote a bunch of words for a draft of a novel (once my kids’ school started up again)

I’m really proud of my list. My kids have had very few normal weeks of school this year, between snow days, sick days, COVID days, holidays, and the school toilet breaking (not a joke). Sometime mid-last school year, I realized I was going to get no writing done, and I declared it a year off from any serious effort until September. It felt really good at first, and then it kind of sucked, and then it was up and down. I am very happy now to have free time, and every time school gets canceled or someone gets sick, it’s a toss up whether I can say OK and accept it, or if I flip out because really? Are you kidding me? The toilet broke??

(I’m just documenting the state of things for future parents to look back on. And maybe my poor children. Sorry, guys, your mom is trying!)

Anyway, I don’t want to glorify productivity, but I know that personally, it feels good to make a list of accomplishments when everything starts to seem like a big blah slog. I would love to know if you do something like this, with the things that matter to you. If you decide to make a list of your own, I would love (LOVE) to see it. Please let me know – you can email me or, if you share it on IG, tag me (I’m @likesoatmeal).

Wishing you nothing but happiness, health, and peace in 2022!