I suppose my first blog post would be a good way to mark a fresh start. It’s been about two months since I received a reading from tarot master, Benebell Wen, during her author reading at Barnes and Noble back in March for her book, Holistic Tarot. It’s rather fitting that Ten of Swords and Death appeared early on (one of my pet peeves is when tarot amateurs think that the Death card literally means death, which is far from the truth. It represents fresh beginnings. I digress).

Now that school’s out for summer break, I feel a huge relief. For those who have known, the past 5 months have been the worst semester I had during my time at UC Berkeley, with Fall 2013 coming in second place. It was just 5 months of constant anxiety, stress, uncertainty, hopelessness, pain, and recurring nightmares. But now that the semester is over, strangely, I’m starting to think it ended up being my most memorable semester because I overcame several trials and tribulations. There were times when I thought of giving up, but I am very lucky to have wonderful friends who were there for me when I needed them, and helped me get through this semester.

Speaking of Fall 2013, during that semester, I was in so much pain, I just wrote. I wrote and wrote and edited and repeated that process for over a year, and it culminated into a novel, a steampunk Little Red Riding Hood retelling that was, frankly, really depressing. I received full requests, had agents and editors tell me it has merit to it, but no one took it on in the end. I actually read through the manuscript last week and realized why they didn’t, because it was that triggering AND depressing. The project is currently shelved. Even though that was heartbreaking, I learned a lot from the experience (no mistake is a true mistake if you are able to learn from it), and you know what? Even though that was over a year of hard work with nothing to show for it, I don’t regret writing it one bit, because writing that novel was incredibly cathartic, and I believe I really polished my ability to write a novel. It was definitely my strongest novel yet, with cleaner plotting and world-building and character development. Even though not everyone liked my characters, I got really great feedback on it. It was a marker of that period of my life, and I’m always writing something, even if it’s just fragments of short stories that get cluttered up in my Google Drive. I think I know what’s going to be next.

Oh, and welcome to my new author website, currently under construction! I figured it was about time I had a more professional-looking one, as my old Blogspot blog was outdated. Definitely time for new beginnings!