Hiya! It’s been a while since I’ve really interacted with this account so I’m deciding to redo my introduction/give a little update!

I’m Zena! 🪰

17, Black, and Nonbinary (they/them)

I’m a realistic fiction writer who also enjoys sci-fi! I love YA/NA novels and write mine with poc and lgbtq characters. 

Romance, angst, and violence scratches the itch in my brain.

I will write characters who are shitty people, but still love them because I have issues :D (looking at you Tony)

Mostly prose, but a little (little) poetry

I’ve been writing seriously for the last four-ish years

Currently, I’m working on Everything but Happiness which is the first linear storyline I’ve ever worked on. It’s extremely in progress (50k words done), and I’ve been writing it for six months now. I struggle a lot writing it because I kinda don’t know what I’m doing (?) but I’m really excited to continue working on it. While having a fairly new wip is a great thing, I’ve also lost a lot in my two year long break from this platform.

When I first joined the writing community, I was 15 (yikes) and writing a separate work called Sit, Speak. At the moment, I haven’t touched that book since Summer 2019. I still think of the characters sometimes and all of the ways I could’ve used them, but I don't feel the spark I used to. Maybe in a couple months or even a year I’d go back and look at it from a different perspective. For now, I’ve discontinued it and don’t see myself picking it up in the near future.

Another WIP I’ve (kinda) discontinued was Kisses Under Oil Painted Skies. I say kinda because I technically haven’t discontinued it. I plan on writing something for that book early next year (2021), but for me, it's become more of a comforting side project. I don’t view it as an “actual book” (whatever the hell that means) anymore, and write chapters for it purely for my own amusement. Some would argue that that still makes it a book -- because I should be writing for myself anyways. It was my first book that really helped me get my footing with this whole writing thing, but I was young (we’re talking 14), and it’s very disorganized. 

I also made a six-work mini zine/portfolio recently. Each submission was a short story with a max word count of 3,000 words which was really hard for me since my average works are anywhere in the 3k - 6k range. It was stressful but working towards hard set deadlines is something that actually forces me to write. Shocking, I know. Still, I’d love to work on something of that caliber again. 

Anyhow, I hope to accomplish lots of things with this blog in the coming year and to document my process while writing. I also have plans for a lot of wip ideas I have like (and their temporary names):

EBH (Everything but Happiness/College drug au)

Gay astronauts (gay space adventures)

Office people

Another 6 work portfolio

Dear Elise (a chapter for kuops)

Only you (murder mystery)

Japan murder (another murder mystery)

And more!

Anyways, that's it from me. Expect a wip intro for EBH soon and hearing my never-ending trifles with being a writer. I hope we grow to be good friends :D