Aurora Kelly

If you follow the on Bluesky you may have seen my casual announcement. In March The Catalyst officially leaves Kindle Unlimited so I may, finally, go wide. That’s already scary and a lot of work so naturally that’s not what I’m announcing.

After years of kicking the idea around, four days ago I finally bit the bullet and started recording an audiobook for The Catalyst. Now, I’m not stupid. This project will not be to most professional standards. While I’ve always loved acting, my only voice work experience comes from a radio spot I did for my aunt when I was 11. And, as those who’ve sat at a table with me as their DM can tell you, I can’t hold an accent save my life.

But, as far as outlandish ideas I’ve had, this one is very exciting. The Catalyst (and The Commander) are written in a format that really begs for spoken word interpretation. I’m loving getting the opportunity to place emphasis the way it was meant to be instead of how punctuation allows. Cora, the first MC, was very much based on me. At 19 I took the advice ‘write what you know’ very seriously, I wrote myself. Getting to voice her, to use my own weird way of speaking to bring her to life, it’s amazing.

Less amazing is waiting for my fridge to turn off and hoping the radiator doesn’t immediately kick on. And then shooing the cat out of the room or waiting for her to finish eating. It’s a frustrating endeavor, but so far very rewarding. I’ve already cried once (for character reasons). I’m nervous about keeping voices consistent, I’m nervous about when I have to switch POVs and I’m nervous about abandoning it halfway through.

I plan to price it laughably low. I want it accessible, but I also want to set expectations at the gate that this is not a traditional audiobook. It should be fun, entertaining, dramatic, and silly. I’ve quite an uphill climb ahead, but so far it’s riotous fun.

In the meantime, things are slowly progressing in the new (still unnamed) series. I’m toying with calling them the Steer Queer Romances, hoping the pun is both funny and functional, but it feels too anachronistic for historical, especially when my characters are meant to represent the real queer people who loved in secret. Either way, it looks like I’ve decided to give myself a year to finish querying The Lady and The List. Originally, my plan was to go full steam ahead with self-publishing by the end of March as everyone I’d submitted to had a three month turnaround. But I just submitted to someone else the other day. And I have five tabs open from #mwsl day on Bluesky to add to my inbox refreshing list.

Self-publishing is always scary, but the loss of TikTok means my reach is absolutely crippled. Trad may be the only avenue for me right now. The hope is, even if every submission gets rejected, waiting a year will give me time to build a stronger foundation on Bluesky. My goal is to have a cushy little following composed of content creators, other indie authors, and readers to gently push my book out beyond my reach. And, on the bright side, five new queries to put together gives me something to do when I’m waiting for my kitchen to be quiet again.

As for the novel in progress, The Gossip and The Guest, I’m… getting there. I did hit my January goal of 10,000 words, but February’s closing soon and I’m only at 2,000. My struggle this time around is quite different. I’m constantly having to stop to do research. Plants are a newer passion of mine and I’m thrilled to incorporate them, but I hadn’t quite grasped how hard I was making it on myself to make them a central focus. Especially considering I am building an English garden with plants from what is now Mexico. My gardener is responsible, I need to know what could be safely planted as a summer ornamental that wouldn’t survive to spread. I need to know what could be grown successfully in an English green house in 1815. And then I need to know a million little things about the Nahuatl culture. And that’s outside of the Deaf x Dyslexic couple that compromise the other half of this novel. So, if you know a botanist that specializes in 18th century Nahuatl/ Aztec plants who wouldn’t mind being peppered with questions, please tell them to reach out.