It's my birthday!

Kind of.

Hello, dear readers!

I don’t have a very long story for you today. I thought about it, but then decided that today is a day worth a small celebration, and for that, we’d have a small 50-word story. You know, like a little tea party. A mad one, I suppose.

Here we go:

Once upon a time - no, scratch that. All stories start that way, four wasted words, without telling you a single thing about the story itself. What does it even mean, anyway? Once upon what time? Why not twice or thrice? Who decided this rule and who put them in charge?

What do you think? It’s like a free-thought, flowy style paragraph, spoken by a confused writer who had too much caffeine and not enough time to write.

In other news, it’s Wednesday Afternoon’s birthday! It’s been a year since I first started this messy newsletter experiment, and let me tell you, it’s been quite the ride. So far, I’ve faced down the fear of sharing my own work, taken a few opportunities that I would’ve shied away from a year ago, and even recently been selected as a contributor to the Storyletter Xpress anthology (coming to you Summer 2024!).

This is absolutely not how I danced in celebration. Definitely not.

Looking back, it felt (and still feels) strange to write words on a screen and release them into the internet. You’re never quite sure where they’ll end up. Maybe they’ll reach someone who really needed them today. Maybe they won’t reach anybody. Maybe they’ll just end up in a dark corner, sobbing, because they’re having a bad day and just ran out of coffee, something I entirely understand.

Or maybe - and most likely - you’ll find a small pocket of success, where you can practice your craft and hone your skills and sometimes create something that you really like. Sometimes those stories will brighten someone else’s day, and then that person will be inspired to do their own thing, which might encourage someone else, and that beautiful circle may continue and eventually make the world a better place.

That’s the hope, anyway. Maybe it sounds grandiose, but that’s what I hope happens here.

In the beginning, only my beloved husband knew about this newsletter. He knew I wanted to try my hand at writing, and I am so grateful that he encouraged me to do this. Because of his influence, I got out of my shell and started working. Now, I have a complete first draft of The Lost Circus, so many flash fiction stories, and the knowledge that I’m getting better, one week at a time.

And you! Thank you, all you lovely people who chose to sign up for this weird newsletter, and haven’t found the Unsubscribe button to get out of it yet. Thank you for being here, for sharing your inboxes, and for spending a few minutes sharing stories with me. I am grateful for all of you, and I hope we still have plenty of words to share with each other.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for being my lab rats faithful readers. Keep on doing what you do, and know that I appreciate you.

And you, my husband, my love. I appreciates you the most.

Keep being wonderful, you nice people, you.

<3 Olivia