Why ENSHRINE doesn't have a sequel...yet.

​

. I know. Shocking. I wish I could tell you that I've been off doing amazing things. (I mean, does cooking a baby human count? because that is happening...but other than that) but I've been on a creative downer. I blame five year olds, Irish dance, and other reasons that I have to talk about tastefully. Excuses, yes. The end of me? Absolutely not.

Okay, so one of the biggest things that my friends, family, and even people who reviewed my debut novel ENSHRINE ask is if or when there will be a sequel. That was a difficult question to answer for YEARS. Yes your heard me, years. I think enough time has finally passed that I can talk about it now to some degree.

I wrote ENSHRINE in 2015. It is insane to me that it's been so long. At the time, I taught 1st and 5th grade English studies at a Hebrew Day School. While I am not Jewish myself, I was immersed in their culture. The whole thing was fascincating, I learned things every day. I also got to see a different view of regligion. I have been Catholic my whole life, but it was interesting to see that some things were extremly similar; the belief that a higher power had a plan for you, that being good to other people was important, and I think overall that is was important and encouraged to show your faith outwardly. If you've read ENSHRINE, you probably get some of those undertones, though I tried to keep it vague on purpose. I think it's funny, now that I work at a Catholic school I feel like my faith is even stronger (or I'm just getting older...) but there was something about that year that can't be replicated.

It was a perfect cocktail.  I had an injury that kept me from my other life consuming hobby (Irish dance) so I had lots of free time. I had this amazing group of students that pushed me and are really the reason I have any books published at all right now.  They begged for me to read to them my manuscript instead of a read aloud book. I CANNOT believe for the life of me that I did not get in trouble. It had nothing to do with school, it was watered down, but still not super appropriate for middle grade (My current boss WILL NOT let me talk about it at school to my students so...) and honestly, I was invested in the plot, the characters, etc. Do not get me wrong, ENSHRINE IS NOT PERFECT. Someone on Goodreads recently gave it one star and I'm glad it happened now and not when it intially came out because I've had time to let is simmer and realize that I have so much life to live and that I'm not amazing yet. It's not perfect writing I'm rambling here...I loved the world of Rosementh, I had prequels, and sequels and spin offs in my head...

...but then nothing happened. You may or may not be wondering why. I couldn't tell you for a long time. Now I am able to at least attempt.

The following school year, my school got a new principal. Without going into too much incrimating detail, this person appeared kind on the surface, but was anything but. Two faced, passive aggressive, bluntly...a snake. While I can only give my side of the story, this person would act like everything was fine, when really they did not like me as a teacher and in my humble opinion as a person because I was not a subserviant woman. I was too "strong girl" for them. This person had the nerve to parade me around in front of their previous employees, put me in uncomfortable, borderline innapropriate situations, and actually used the phrase "we have to find a way to market you to get people to come to our school" when I ended up getting my deal for ENSHRINE. Work was stressful, my stomach used to flip when they would walk into a room I was in. I will clarify that no, this person never touched me, but I certainly felt like an object in their presence. It was not fun. To summize this already long paragraph. I was "let go" because this person wanted to go in a "different direction" even though up until they notified me of this they seemed happy with me. Once again (God, I sound like a conspiracy theorist) I can only speak my feelings on the matter but I was one of MANY (try like 7 or 8) that either quit or were not asked back and I think in my case it had to with not worshipping this person, being strong willed, and other reasons I don't feel comfortable typing out. Needless to say all the warm fuzzy things I felt while working there were gone. I was bitter and hurt and even though ENSHRINE brought me happiness, it hurt too much to go to Rosementh where secondary characters were based on former students, where the windows by my first grade classroom were where I literally wrote the book's first words. The spring sun Sage felt... it was winter sun for me but...I don't know...it felt like my safe writing place had been stolen from me. I had spent hours in various nooks and crannies after school or during prep periods in the building writing my debut novel, and it was gone.

It was even harder when I had former students from that special class emailing me. Even at my new job. That hurts the most...We went back and forth for a while and I tried to keep up with her and my chest hurts even now as I write this. This child was one of a kind. I hope she writes books of her own someday and if she is reading this...I'm so sorry that we fell out of contract and I think about emailing you often and I'm worried too much time has passed and I hope you know that me struggling with all of this never had anything to do with you. Someday YOU WILL READ EMINENCE AND FORGET ME NOT.  

Straight up, Enshrine has a sequel. It has a prequel as well, but the second book in the story, called EMINENCE had over 30,000 words before someone thew the proverbial hair dryer in the bathtub (I'm dramatic, what of it!?) It is completely outlined. IT HAD MULTIPLE SHIPS (isn't that the goal?)

There were other minor issues before my former employer destroyed my happy place. The first being that as I write more, I find that my style of writing is not Pollyanna Vanilla. I like swear words, and if people feel strongly about each other and they want to show it by getting naked...welp...I'm not going to "keep it clean".  I struggled with this for a while. While by no means is what I write pornographic or anything like I did for ghostwriting, I was initially horrified at the thought of some of my more conservative coworkers (both Jewish and Catholic) reading it and even more so when I found out that twelve-year-old girls were buying and reading my books a few towns over (one of my friends was literally buying them for her daughter, nieces, and daughters friends) because my (spoiler alert) my married couple has sex in book two. I think i'm a little bit wiser now and know I should just write for myself (plus they are 15/16 now ha!)

Also can we talk about how people have asked me to (again spoiler alert) unkill several characters in ENSHRINE? I feel like that is an absolute TABOO that should not be broken. That's like Darth Maul coming back in the Clone Wars Series (My cousin and I literally had an agrument about this on Memorial Day) YOU DON'T DO IT. DARTH MAUL GOT SLICED IN TWO. DEAL WITH IT. I don't care what is cannon and I digress...I actually considered it for half a second though. Again, write for me. Let your characters stay dead. Even if your mom doesn't want them to be (Hi MOM!)I'm getting to the end here! I promise.

I'm a semi terrible person and I have not actually gotten through Game of Thrones in its entirety. That being said, I know the Stark storyline backward and forward. I relate to them in my dance journey (I had a Stark themed cape for my previous solo dress) and at first I regretted that choice because let's be real, the Starks have seen and dealt with some shit, but now seeing how it has panned out (I mean GRRM may deviate) I think that I need to stay loyal to my house because it all turned out right in the end. I mean if Sansa can go from this to where she ended up. I can get through my problems too.

That's my long, conviluted way to say yes, I'll be taking a stab at Eminence again. 

I had at least three other things I was going to post about...but this is long enough as it is. 

Bye for now,

Kay