COLLECTING DUST is now PUBLISHED!

My short story was published in an anthology: COLLECTING DUST!!!

Book Blurb:

Voices from Malaysia to New York, from South Korea to Argentina, emerge in this poignant collection of short fiction and poetry.

It is morning. We wake beside our loved ones; we reminisce on an elementary romance. Then comes twilight. We fall in love with pyromaniacs; we realize that perhaps we do not need magic; we find ourselves to lose ourselves again. Night falls. Monsters arise; hearts break; we become our fathers.

These are the stories of the rays of sun and the dark corners; the beginnings and the endings; the mornings, the twilights, and finally, the nights. The moments we dwell fondly upon and the moments that remain buried in memory, collecting dust.

I have never expected this!

I honestly thought that I wouldn’t get one of my short stories published….but thank goodness, it did :). I was over the moon when I heard this.

ABOUT “THE MYSTERIOUS KNOCKER”

Just a reminder: This is my original work and plagiarism of any form will not be tolerated.

Summary:  He is fast asleep until three knocks are heard at his door in the middle of the night. Who could it be at that hour? An intruder? Or is it his mind, playing tricks on him?

Genre: Flash fiction, Mystery

POV: First person, present tense

Word Count:  855 words originally, but had to cut down quite a bit so I think it is about 800 words now.

Characters:  It doesn’t say much about the characters since it is all happening in first person perspective.

The writing bit: I wrote this a long time ago when I was a university student. I didn’t know at that time, this story would be picked up again for revision since this was the first short story I have ever written. So I thought I would have to drastically rewrite the entire story.

Of course I had to rewrite it again (first drafts are the dead of me x_x) but I didn’t have to rewrite as much as I thought since the main plot points were already there. I am happy at how it turned out and I can’t wait for you guys to pick it up and read it :D.

Conception: I was inspired by the first sentence, ‘Three knocks I heard at the door’ of this story. And decided to write a story based around it.

That’s it for this update!

Here are the links to buy/read it: Purchase the paperback or Purchase the Kindle version or the Barnes and Noble store

Talk to you soon! Alex is signing off.

I CREATED AN AUTHORTUBE CHANNEL!!!

I DID A THING;

I created my own AuthorTube channel!!! 

In this video, I answered a bunch of questions about me as a writer, and things you can expect from my channel.

If you like what you see, it would mean the world to me if you subscribed! Thanks so much for your support!~!! 😄

Trust the process and keep writing~!

Alex is signing out! 🙂

MY SHORT STORY is going to be published…! 😱

OMG! OMG! OMG!

I can finally say it!!!!

😱 MY SHORT STORY is going to be published in COLLECTING DUST [an anthology of short stories and poems from all around the world] edited by @hudsonwarmbooks

I’M EXCITED!

I can’t wait for you guys to read The Mysterious Knocker !!!

It’s about someone who can’t fall asleep because he keeps hearing loud, sinister knocks on his door in the middle of the night. Is it an intruder or is it his imagination?

[ Mysterious Knocker’s summary ]

👇 CLICK TO PREORDER!!

Kindle | Paperback

I cannot wait for you guys to read this story. This was my first ever short story I wrote back when I was a teenager. AHHHHH! I’m so so glad it got accepted into this anthology. I will not forget the day where I received the good news.

Want to read it first before anyone else?

👉 Then, BECOME an ARC READER!

* “ARC stands for Advanced Readers Copy. Advanced readers copies can’t be sold and are given to bloggers, reviewers and booksellers in exchange for a review and to help generate buzz about a book before it comes out.”

That doesn’t mean you have to be a blogger or reviewer to sign up. It can be anyone who enjoys reading and short stories.

I’ll post more stuff on the release day. So this is all for now. Trust the process and keep going! Alex is signing out. 😊

Hang out with me on Instagram where I’ll keep you up-to-date with my writing updates.

Socials:

Instagram: @alexwritesandsings ( for writing updates + motivation)

Twitter: @lexwritesnsings

Website: www.authoralexandriajohnson.com

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Goals I Wanna Achieve in 2022!

Yes, it’s another late post from me. It was supposed to go up in January.

O. M. G.

What just happened?

The revelation is sinking in. Another year has come and gone! Can you believe it?

Even at the time posting this, it is still so surreal! It’s already the new year! What?

I mean, first it was 2021 and now, I get up, it’s already 2022… ????

Also, hey, I hope you’re doing well because I am still in shock. I need to sit down.

**Cue the Joey Tribbiani’s shocked face over here**

But you guys know what that means, yes it’s another New Year resolution blog post. I gotta keep track of all these goals, and besides, looking back at them to see whether I’d achieved them is kinda fun. So I’m doing it this year too!!

What are your plans for the year?

As for me, I have too many goals but I try to shrink them down to a minimum…don’t wanna overwhelm myself like the previous years. Hehehe. So this year, my list is small.

My 2022 goals:

Oh man, there are so many things I wanna do this year but gonna only stick to 5:

1) being able to write more short stories and submit them to literary magazines or contests.

I am pushing myself out of my comfort zone because I realised nobody is going to do it unless I make the first move. Word of the year is ~EXPERIMENT~ again because it worked out last year, and I wanna do it again. Seems like I am carefree this way.

Like, last year, I decided to convert my fantasy poems into short stories. So far, I’ve written 3 and I’m going to start on the next one very soon. I’m hoping to finish The Phoenix Sisters short stories probably at the end of this week (at the time posting this, it would most likely be finished)

So this year, I would like to experiment writing shorts for Project #TheGlassKingdom and see where they take me.

2) Finish both the 2nd draft of Project The Glass Kingdom and Project Sprite

I really wish this would come true because I need to get one of them done. SO, I CAN FULLY invest my time on drafting and revising The Glass Kingdom.

3) And finally, I want to finish reading my 2021 book haul before uni starts.

This is such a long shot but what the heck, I need to read my overflowing to-be-read pile! *blows the dust off my shelves*

4) Get ready before Uni life starts.

I gotta make sure that I have everything I need before university starts especially getting a new phone, laptop (is about to KO soon), and a device that allows me to do digital art without lagging because my tablet sucks!

5) Avoid toxic people, and getting overwhelmed

I really need to bear this in mind this year. It’s affecting my health and I don’t like it one bit.

That is all for now. Now will I achieve them?

Big question for me too. But we will see how it goes 😀

Happy New Year!

Talk to you soon. Alex is signing off.

Hang out with me on Instagram where I’ll keep you up-to-date with my writing updates.

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Instagram: @alexwritesandsings ( for writing updates + motivation)

Twitter: @lexwritesnsings

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Was it DOOMED from the start—Writing 2 Novels at the Same Time ?

I can tell you straight on, it was.

It was a good idea at the time. I wanted to do so many things during that month: I wanted to complete at least a draft at the end of April. I wanted to hurry up and finish the book I’ve been working for 4 years, and get it to the hands of beta readers FASSST! I wanted so much to be a little closer to my goal—to be a published author.

But did I ask my body whether I could handle it?

I thought I could. Honestly, I had hope.

Burnout came too quickly.

And then, you know what happened to the plan, I don’t have to explain here. I guess you already know.

Arghhhh, the pain!!!

I didn’t touch the story for weeks after that. I tried to kickstart the motivation to write for several weeks before Eid Mubarak, but of course it didn’t take off. I’m guessing it could have been part of the novel too. Maybe the story wasn’t not strong enough to make me excited to go back and work on it. I had been worrying about that too recently.

Then I remembered what I always say over on my Instagram….

And…

~ And that was what I did.

I switched my routine whilst taking a break. I turned to ART. Art was and still is my therapy.

Artwork Pieces I’ve done in April-May:

Participated in the Spring Creativity Challenge Art Prompt: Nest

Did a DTIYS challenge hosted by Katie Mai

Did a painting for Easter Day!

Participated in the Spring Creativity Challenge Prompt: Cherry Blossoms

Did a DTIYS challenge hosted by colourlime

We Stand With Ukraine

I made mostly digital art and when I felt like it, I did some traditional art (just for fun) as well. I’m still not good at it but I had been having fun just experimenting with different mediums.

I had been so focused with my art that I didn’t have anytime to work on the 2 novels I had planned to finish that month. So that went out the window quickly. 😅

Well it’s okay. I’ll just work on whenever I want to. I need to learn not to put so much pressure on myself. It’s just 2 books. If I cannot work on 2 books at the same time, so what? There are plenty of months to do so.

In the meantime, I’ll just work on ONE project, and if I ever get tired of that, I’ll do some worldbuilding for Project The Glass Kingdom. There are some remaining subplots I don’t know how to write yet. And I want to gather as much info as I can so that I’ll be fully ready to write the 2nd draft.

So let’s hear about your month! Anything exciting happened?

That is all for now. Alex is signing out!

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