Emily Fortney's Blog

Hi Rebels!

I’ve been working on The Crimson Witch for a long time, like several years at this point. In case you’re new here, The Crimson Witch is book # 4 in my Camilla Crim series. And I’m tempted to feel guilty about how long it’s taken me to write this book, but I felt this same way back when I was writing the 2nd book in the series, The Bear Gap Rebels.

The plot for that book was just so muddled and I wasn’t as experienced of a writer and I really struggled. I don’t remember the ...

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2025. What a nice even number of a year. 2025 really rolls off the tongue beautifully. I’d be more excited about this year except the last time we had a nice even, symmetrical year, things didn’t turn out so hot. 😓

Moving on. This year, I thought I’d share with all of you my 2025 clean fantasy read list. These are books I plan to read this year and I’ll share why they’re on my list. Now, I want to be clear. I’m not vouch...

* Trigger Warning: this post is about pet loss. Please skip if this topic is too distressing for you. Stay well. ❤️*

Boy, it has been tough trying to write this blog post. Every time I sit down to make an attempt, I invariably start to tear up. We all know that laptops and tears do not mix so I’ve been giving up and resolving to try again later. Why am I finding this post so hard to write? I’ll just come out and break the news. About a month ago, my beloved furry friend, Philippe, passed away...

Right now I’m sitting at my desk sipping on a tall coffee from Starbucks and thinking about 2024. It’s truly hard to believe that we’re in February already. It usually takes me a couple of months to get used to writing the date correctly. Can anyone else relate? Lol

I remember hearing of some study that states that people tend to abandon their new year’s resolutions by February. Yikes! I believe it though. I did something different this year and actually typed up my goals and taped them on the ba...

It’s 2024. Let me put that in perspective for you. Since we all now measure time in relation to the breakout of COVID-19, that means we are almost 4 years from the start of COVID. Someone told me that the other day and I almost couldn’t believe it. But like wasn’t 2021 just last year??

Every year I do a “year in review” in my own personal journal where I just make bullet points of the most notable things that happened in my life that year. I pulled that page up a few days ago and realized I h...

This time last year I had to admit to you (with great regret) that I hadn’t finished 2022 Nanowrimo… BUT this year I can happily report that I did finish! If you don’t follow me on social media then you may have missed my announcement that I officially wrote 50,000 words of The Crimson Witch in the month of November as part of National Novel Writing Month.

It felt SOOO incredibly good to be back to writing every day. Anyone who has ever had a creative passion understands how it feels to LOVE ...

Are you ready for Thanksgiving? Here in the US we have Thanksgiving coming up later this month. I just hosted a Friendsgiving at my house which was a lot of fun. Check out my beautiful bird below.

Despite Thanksgiving (and even Christmas) being a big part of November, truth is, it’s not top of mind for me. That’s because November is also National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo. I’ve talked about Nanowrimo a lot but in case you don’t know what it is, it’s a writing challenge where autho...

A little while ago I watched a show on Netflix called “How to become a Tyrant”. It chronicled the rise of 6 famous dictators in history including Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and of course, Hitler. In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, it gave the steps (whether intentional or not) that these men took to be called a tyrant and receive their notoriety. I was so compelled by this series. I think I watched all the episodes in just a couple of days. Have ya seen it?

Well, it got me thinking about Elmyr...

I know it’s been a bit since we’ve chatted. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you… or Camilla. But I moved recently (again). Astute readers will remember that I moved exactly a year ago. Hopefully I’ll be settled at my new place for a little longer this time…

Moving is terrible. Who’s with me? It’s such a pain to pack up all your crap and then just have to unpack it a couple of weeks later. And it doesn’t seem to matter how many times I declutter, I still have so much junk! I’ve reached ...

A little update on me. I’m feeling a lot more calm and settled these days since taking the pressure off of finishing The Crimson Witch by March. It’s actually made me more drawn to my manuscript and made me more delighted to work on it. Funny how that works…

I’ve shared a few goals for this month with one of my writing critique partners so I thought I’d share them with you as well. More accountability can’t hurt right? Where I last stopped writing, I had realized that my plot had some hiccups...