May 7, 2026

Happy Spring!

Now that we are into the month of May, I think it's safe to say winter is TRULY over. I, for one, and very glad to be done with the snow and ice. I love it at Christmas, but come March I have usually had more than my fill of it.

I've been making the most of the warm weather lately and trying to get out for walks around my neighbourhood a bit more. We moved into this apartment in January, and the weather kept me inside so much that I still don't feel too familiar with the area. My favourite walk recently was through a small park, not far from our building. There is a little creek running through it (pictured above), and I took some time to walk along it and say hello to the ducks, the blackbirds, the flowers, and the robins. I've been missing the woods I grew up in and the beautiful parks I visited in Halifax a lot lately, so it has been nice to find some pockets of nature in the Toronto area to fill the void a little.

I'm also taking this season as a time to plant some metaphorical seeds. This winter was a particularly hard one. I was in a new city, dealing with some medical issues, and facing the constant struggle of unemployment and financial hardship. It's safe to say the transistion to living in Toronto was no where near as smooth as I had hoped it would be. I'm walking a lot better after five months of physiotherapy, but not much has improved on the other fronts. I still haven't found a new job, I'm still struggling financially and relying a lot on my partner's student loans to get us by, and I still don't feel like I've found my footing in this city. To be brutally honest, I've been a bit miserable and feeling pretty down on myself. I don't want to spend another season like this.

There is a lot I still can't control. I'm still applying to a lot of jobs, and I have no intention to stop trying there, but I can't do anything about the market being the way it is right now. What I can do, however, is try to find other opportunities to support myself and move forward. I've been picking up some freelance work, taking minutes for meetings in the city and doing some beta-reading, which will hopefully help relieve some of the financial pressure. I've also being trying to structure my days and weeks a bit more, making sure there is plenty of time for writing. I took a lot away from volunteering at Toronto Indie Author Conference last month, and I would like to turn some of the extra time I have while I'm not regularly employed to commit myself to my creative endeavours.

Which, dear readers, is where this newsletter comes in. I hope you'll follow me along on this journey and enjoy the updates on my life and my projects. I'll be sending them out twice a month (on the 7th and the 21st) and in addition to the updates, I will also throw in some little rewards for your support. If you keep reading after this long intro, you'll get a look at what some of them might be.

In the meantime, there is still a lot of Toronto to explore! I'm going to go enjoy some of the sunshine.

Love,

Kelsey

Author Notes

I currently have one poetry and two prose projects on my curuent focuses list:

Pop Girl Poetry is a project inspired by the Storytelling Collective April Daily Poem challenge from 2024. That year, all the prompts were inspired by the tracklist og Taylor Swift's album, The Tortured Poets Department. I gave myself the additional challenge of trying to use a different poetic for for each poem. I had a lot of fun with that challenge and have decided I want to bring it back as a ko-fi series. For each 'volume' of this project, I will write a poem inspired by each track on an album. The inspiration could come from the title, a lyric, or the overall vibe of the song. I will randomly select a poetic form from this list that I will have to try to use for that poem. Once I've got the first set completed, I'll be sharing them to my ko-fi page. I am planning to begin this series with The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess by Chappell Roan, but feel free to let me know on social media if you had a suggestion for future installments!

The two prose projects I am focusing on inclue a short story and a novella(? we'll see how long it ends up being). The short story is fantasy story currently titled "The King of the Forest and the Family Next Door", and it is heavily inspired by my experiences growing up in the Margaree area of Cape Breton Island, specifically in a heavily forested mountain area. The novella(?) is currently just being called "Second Chance Space Romance" and it is a scifi romance about a smuggler who is hired to help escort a group of rebels safely out of their system, only to find out that one of them is the woman he formerly dated on a Bachelorette-like reality show (that ended pretty terribly for them). I've been playing around with this idea in my head for a bit, and am still in the process of outlining it, but I'm excited to try and make something out of it!

Gaming Table

I recently started up a game of Good Society with a few of my friends. At the time that I am writing this we've only done our session zero for playset and character creation, but we've already made things incredibly messy. So much so that we needed to make a relationship map just to keep track of where things stand here at the start.

I am playing Lady Rilla Avington, who is the eldest child of the Earl of Habishire. She's something of a famous socialite, but also known for being quite vain. Rilla is a very friendly and sociable person, often the picture of a perfect deubtante...besides the fact that she isn't married yet, something she is facing pressure from her family to address. She had a fling with Ms. Lilibet in the past, but ended it due to that pressure. While marriage is now being discussed between here and Ambrose, she's wondering if she made a mistake lietting Lilibet go.

We have our first proper session in a few hours as I am writing this, and I look forward to sharing more next time!

Game Design

I am mostly focusing on WrestlingBrands at this time. This is the working title for my pro-wrestling themed hack of Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands. I have a good idea of the factions nows and have been working on figuring out how I want to structure the solitaire game. I am leaning towards having a single set of options for everyone to pick from, as opposed to one set for each faction. I'm not sure there is enough variation in this setting to justify having three sets. One options I'm rolling over in my mind (in light of all the post-Wrestlemania WWE releases) is a solitaire option for being released from your contract, with the branches off of it including the option to sign with another promotion. I would probably have to limit how often this could be picked, but it seems like it could be an interesting option to have.

Solo Game Series

I have finished my playthrough of Reincarnated as the Unlovable Villainess?! And am now working on editing it. Once I have it all typed up and ready to go, I'll be beginning to post it on my ko-fi page. The series will be available to everyone to read, but if you'd like to request a game and guarantee I'll play it next, join my memberships at the $5 or above level and you can drop it in the comments of my pinned members requests post!

Crafting Corner

I have two main crafting projects on the go right now. The first is my Fleece & Harmony Mystery Blanket, which I have been working on off and on since 2024 and am getting so close to finishing.

Once I finish sewing the squares together, all that will be left to do is put a border on it and this project will finally be complete! As much as I have loved working on it, I am looking forward to having it finished and moving onto stomething else.

The second crafting project I have on the go is a series of bookmarks that I hope to put up for sale in the future. I've been taking inspiration from the Ko-Fi themes shared in the Ko-Fi discord to plan the design. So far, I have completed a bookmark with a flower charm, one with an owl charm, and am planning some mermaid themed ones for this month.

Reading Nook

I'm going to hold off on writing too much here for this first issue, because I'm still figuring out hoe to structure it a bit. My plan is to share some notes on books I have finished since the last newsletter edition, starting with whatever I finish reading over the next couple of weeks.

April was a very busy reading month for me, especially since the Gothic Book Club I attend through the Toronto Public Library system was reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins last month, which was over 700 pages. I really enjoyed it, but it certainly took up a lot of time! I'm also still doing a lot of reading anytime I have to take the TTC somewhere, shich is probably when the bulk of my reading gets done right now.

Poetry Reading

What if?

What if it wasn't worth it?
What if I left behind my entire world,
blew up my entire life,
and it doesn't work out in the end?
What if I end up with nothing, alone,
in a city that doesn't want me?

What if it does work out?
What if everything I want finds its way to me,
and this new life is better than my old one
colud ever be?

Which gamble do I take?
Safety? Or hope?

-KLC, 04/09/2026

Spotlight

​My friend Asteyni has begun a new solo game series, playing through A Faerie Court Visitation.​

Asteyni's first solo game series was the inspiration behind me starting my own, so I highly recommended checking her page out and following along!

Reader Reward

Thank you for reading this inagural edition of my newsletter! In the future, these rewards will probably be tied to specific products in my shop. But, since this is the first one, you can get 50% off of EVERYTHING in my ko-fi shop!

If you like the free game you got for joining this mailing list, please considering purchasing one of my other ones. Any amount of support goes a long way for me right now!

Use this link to claim your discount!

All sales, tips, memberships, and commissions through my ko-fi page currently go to covering my living expenses while I look for more stable employment, so any and all support is super appreciated!