Spring / Summer - June 2025
I’m cutting it close, sending this quarterly/seasonal letter out the week of the Summer solstice. It doesn’t feel like much of a Spring letter.
Spring is a season of waking, when the ice is supposed to melt and everything comes alive again. But I’ve felt like the ice has been crusted over me the entire year so far, barely starting to thaw.
Where has the year even gone? Let’s catch up.
Do you ever have those check-ins with yourself where you try to remember all the things you’ve accomplished recently, and you can’t help but draw a blank? That’s what 2025 feels like. The time has been slipping through my fingers at an almost alarming rate. I’m not nearly where I thought I would be by this time this year, but here we are.
As I’m writing this, I’m getting over a cold. I made myself slow down the last couple weeks to heal, which has been difficult considering how fast everything has still continued to move around me. I wanted to be out at the protests last weekend, but not at the risk of getting anyone else sick. I’m proud of everyone who went, though.
This year has been a blur. A big scary, happy, heartbreaking, joyful blur.
Grief has hit me particularly hard this year, and it’s been even harder for me to admit that’s the reason I’ve struggled to write so much. Grief from losing my dad at the end of 2023, in the middle of writing the book that I’m still trying to publish. Grief from the state of the world. Grief from not being where I want to be yet in my professional life. It’s hard to admit that the thing holding you back the most, is a feeling that we all have to learn to live with. Grief will walk alongside me for the rest of my life. But it’s been hard to even acknowledge it as something I’ve let get in my way, and I think that’s made it more difficult.
So, first, I’m going to list some fun things I’ve done this year. Share some of my joy. Then, I’m going to be very honest about where I’m at creatively.
2025 so far:
We got Mac spayed in the first week of 2025, and she was a champ. She provided us with many silly pics of her in a neck brace.
One of my besties visited, and we went to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park.
I visited CA for the first time since Summer 2023. It was the first time I’d been home, seen my mom and most of my friends since my dad died. The “firsts” that come after a loss are strange. The trip was wonderful. I used a bunch of travel points to stay at a nice hotel on the marina in Redondo Beach.
I went to my first KPOP concert, and got to see Stray Kids with two of my best friends.
I met up with some lovely friends at Hermosa Beach where we hung out and had lunch. The morning of the concert, I submitted my first ever short story to an anthology. I really needed a reset, and the trip was exactly that.
Falling Star:
I’m not sure when Falling Star is going to be done. I really was shooting for the end of 2025, but at this point I’m still not comfortable promising any dates. I’m thinking early 2026 might be more realistic. I promise I’ll keep you posted on that by the end of the summer.
I’ve mentioned up until this point that I’m doing heavy edits, but I also haven’t been entirely transparent. I’ve been rewriting the entire book. It needed much more work than just a few rounds of developmental edits. Even when I’m done with rewrites, it will need to go to my critique partners and beta readers, and then I’ll need to put it through edits.
That’s been really hard for me to say out loud, or come to terms with. How long it’s taking me, having to work on it around my day job (which has been very demanding these last few months, leaving me exhausted at the end of most days), and around my grief and life. But I also think it’s important to be honest.
As soon as I have a bigger update, I promise I’ll share it. But for now, that’s where I’m at.
Short Story
I talked a little bit about this already, but I spent two months brainstorming, outlining, writing, and editing a short story. I sent it to two writer friends for feedback, then edited and polished it until the submission window opened. It’s inspired by a previous WIP that fit the prompt so well, I had to write it and see if maybe I could do it justice in some way. I’ve written the story idea as a book three times now and just couldn’t get it right, but this short story felt like the heart of it. Even if it doesn’t get into the anthology, I’m going to do something with it. It reminded me that maybe I do know what I’m doing, even if Falling Star isn’t done yet. Hell, maybe the story will snowball into the novel it was supposed to be someday, now that I’ve gotten a version of it that I like out onto the page. I can’t wait to share it eventually. It’s a horror story about grief, nostalgia, and transition, and takes place by the beach. It felt fitting to submit it while staying by the ocean, on a trip where I visited my hometown and was feeling all sorts of nostalgia.
I’ve mentioned grief a lot in this letter, so I think it’s an appropriate topic for this section.
Creating while grieving is so hard. I’m not always the best at checking in with my own emotional state, and I tend to push through rough patches in my life by working on projects, carrying on like the weight of the world or my feelings aren’t heavy at all. As if I wasn’t on a bullet train already running on nothing but fumes, set to crash at the next slightest inconvenience.
Taking my trip a few weeks ago really made me slow the train down, and realize that the grief has been dragging behind me this entire time. I haven’t figured out how to walk alongside it. I know some days I probably will have to drag it, but I need to take the time to figure out how to move with it. Otherwise, I’ll continue to run myself ragged and wonder why I’m not making the progress I wish I was, or why I’m not enjoying things as much as I could be. Ignoring it doesn’t mean it’s not there. And it will always be there.
When the doctor came into the ICU and told my dad that his cancer was terminal and chemo wasn’t an option, that he might have a few weeks (he’d be gone in one), my husband and I sat with him in silence. I asked him what he was thinking about. He said, “How fast life goes by.” Life has crashed passed since then, and it’s been terrifying. I’ve felt like I’m in a race with myself that I never stood a chance of winning. But that’s ridiculous, because the only thing I’ve been trying to do is make art. I’ll either make it or I won’t. And just because I don’t finish a project tomorrow, in a few months, or even in a year, doesn’t mean that I’ll never finish it. Doesn’t mean that I’m a failure. Especially if I’ve also been managing something as heavy as grief so that I can make that art to the best of my ability.
I’ve also come to realize that my fear of slowing down probably stems from the fact that my dad never got to read my work. He’d always joke that I’d have to read my book at his grave, and that was well before we found out he was sick.
There’s a fear that comes with a loss like that. A fear that if I take too long, I’ll keep missing a chance to share my art with someone. But that’s also not a good reason to scare yourself into making art. Not if you sacrifice healing by doing so.
The other thing my dad said in the ICU, is something that I think about daily. He looked at me and my husband and said, “When all this is over, you two are going to go kick ass at life.”
So every day that’s passed since he died, I’ve held that up as some kind of measure. Am I kicking ass at life? I haven’t finished my book. I haven’t gotten back into painting. I started and stopped my YouTube channel for the 10th time. I haven’t started writing the three other books I have lined up, ready to start.
But I have seen some pretty cool sunsets. I wrote a short story. I opened my gouache set and made my husband a birthday card, even though I haven’t touched the paints since. I flew back to California and put my feet in the sand. I found a really good pizza place in the new town I moved to in November. I’m rediscovering my love for summer, now that I live in a state with seasons.
Kicking ass at life can be more than just accomplishing things. Sometimes it’s just finding joy, and making life something you love. Cultivating a life where grief can take root where it needs to, and everything else can bloom around it.
I’m rearranging my garden so that I can make room for my art, in spite of my grief. It’s okay if it takes some time. I will still have people to share it with.
Fuck generative AI. Art is a skill that must be practiced. Typing a description into a box and having it spit out a manuscript or generate an image (stolen from other creators) does not make you an artist.
Craft is something to be honed. It’s a labor of love. It’s not supposed to be easy, just for the sake of popularity or money. We make art because we’re human, and AI is not.
Well, you already know that I don’t have any big updates at the moment, but hopefully in a few months I’ll have something for you!
The work doesn’t vanish when we pause to take a break. It’ll be there waiting for our return.
Here’s how I’ve been refilling my creative well:
Music: A new Ryn Weaver song just dropped and I’m obsessed. It’s called Odin St. I’ve also been listening to lots of Stray Kids because of the concert.
Books: Hollow by Taylor Grothe is such a special book. I’m on the street team and got to read an ARC, and I loved it. It comes out in September! Just in time for spooky season. I also just started Kill Creatures by Rory Power, and let me just say. Rory never disappoints. Last, I had to buy V.E. Schwab’s new sapphic vampire book, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. That one’s going to be a real treat.
Games: My husband and I have been playing Legend of Zelda: Windwaker and having THE BEST time. We started playing Deltarune, because the newest chapters just dropped, and I think I might love it more than Undertale. I’m a sucker for a portal fantasy, what can I say. We’ve also been playing Grounded, which is a game about four kids who get shrunk in a backyard and have to solve the mystery of what happened to them. It’s a survival, crafting game where you build bases, fight bugs, and it’s got a late 80’s/early 90’s vibe. They just announced Grounded 2, so we’re finally gearing up to beat the final boss with one of our best friends.
Movies: SINNERS. My god, please go see it if you haven’t. I want to watch it like 20 more times.
Shows: Severance is one of the best shows I’ve watched in such a long time. I can’t recommend it enough. Also, Ted Lasso is basically Bluey but with football, and I’m so sad to be caught up on it now because it brought me instant comfort every time we sat down to watch it.
I hope that this letter was a nice little break in your day—a rest stop if you needed it.
Thanks for sticking around and being excited about my art even if it’s taking longer than I thought it would.
From my glowing rectangle to yours,
Jasmine