ShadowLightPress

      I missed this post by a day, but yeah. The 25th marked one year since I made the decision to return to independent publishing. I am not new to online publishing, far from it. I've been published on and off since 2004--I was a baby author in training then--from fanfiction to poetry,--I wrote and love it all. I actually discuss my first journey in  this post here. What does my writing routine actually like? When I write, I make sure to have three things on me at all times (if not all three, then at least one)  My phone (The Notes feature is handy) A notebook and pen/pencil My Ipad I write in the mornings and late into the night---whenever and wherever I can. There's no true routine to it.  How do you handle burnout, writer’s block, or “this is trash” days?     I'm learning to preserve ideas that don't work, characters who don't sing to my tune, and scenes that have no place. I collect them in a notebook for later projects. They will bear ...

 Big news, friends — my books under Rin Nocturne and Seraphine Vale are now available on Bookshop.org ! 🎉 👉 Browse my titles here: Rin Nocturne on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Rin+Nocturne Seraphine Vale on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Seraphine+Vale This is a brand-new distribution option through Draft2Digital. It’s a pretty exciting step forward for indie authors and readers who want to support independent bookstores. Recently, Draft2Digital partnered with Bookshop.org to bring self-published ebooks directly to indie bookstores and readers through the platform. That means when you grab an ebook through Bookshop.org, you’re helping support independent bookstores while also supporting indie authors like me. 💙 According to the announcement, this partnership allows thousands of self-published titles to be sold through Bookshop.org’s growing ebook platform — and ebook profits go directly to participating bookstores, creating ...

 Happy Birthday to me! 🎂 And an even happier book birthday/release day to Quiet Deviations, my first short story of 2026! Woo-hoo!! I'm so nervous about how it will be received, but like all of my work, I have feelings and fears --this is the best way to get them out. (This excerpt is a little shorter than the original one). Information is below, along with purchase links. Overdrive and Hoopla are ebook libraries. You'll need a public library card to check out books at no cost to you. Thanks for supporting my work! Chapter 1 –  The Right to Remain The Archive smells like dust and quiet ambition, the way libraries always do, but here it’s cleaner, almost sterile, filtered light sliding across the frosted glass of my office window. I like my office. Always have. It’s small, slightly cluttered with journals, a mug with a chip on its rim, and stacks of returned books I haven’t yet reconciled with the shelves. The frosted glass keeps the world at a distance, and the Archive’s puls...

    Chapter 1 – The Right to Remain The Archive smells like dust and quiet ambition, the way libraries always do, but here it’s cleaner, almost sterile, filtered light sliding across the frosted glass of my office window. I like my office. Always have. It’s small, slightly cluttered with journals, a mug with a chip on its rim, and stacks of returned books I haven’t yet reconciled with the shelves. The frosted glass keeps the world at a distance, and the Archive’s pulse is just soft enough not to drown me. I boot up WorkReady. My little corner of the system hums to life as the login prompt fades. Overnight reports populate the screen, automated actions tallied, flags raised and resolved. The LOST items queue is first: books overdue by one month automatically fined, marked as vanished if no one returns them. The system never misses a beat. I like that. Reliability is a small comfort. I hover over the first report and nod to myself. Another stack of overdue fiction, some travel g...

 I can now share more information on the upcoming short story under the Seraphine Vale name.  Title: Quiet Deviations: A Short Story  Official Release Date : 2/1/2026 Blurb:  Milla Braxton works in a library designed to forget nothing. In Aria, a nation founded as sanctuary, every citizen is guided by WorkReady—a system built to optimize labor, behavior, and risk. It assigns work, measures usefulness, and quietly decides which lives remain legible. In the library, it catalogs stories, flags language, and removes what no longer fits the future it is building. Most people trust the system. Milla used to. When a book vanishes without record or appeal, Milla begins to notice the silences—gaps in the shelves, in the logs, in the way her colleagues speak when WorkReady is listening. The system isn't malfunctioning. It is refining. And it is learning to do so without human consent. As rules tighten and oversight becomes intimate, Milla finds herself choosing between obedie...