Amanda Vander Kelen

 I came back from my social media hiatus and posted a YouTube short that gained over 1.2k views. This is by far the most views I have had on my channel (by like, 1,000). I left YouTube alone since the post because I have been focusing on job applications and interviews. I did, however, do something I had been purposefully avoiding for years. I created my first TikTok account. I have said ad nauseam that that I have never seen a "TikTok" and all it references for me is that Ke$ha song and Return To Oz with Fairuza Balk. I can no longer say this. I am officially part of the TikTok world, and honestly, I am kind of loving it. I have found BookTok, which is a really perfect way to advertise my book, once it is ready to publish. I have already reached out to a few book reviews in my genre that said they would read my book once it is out and post a TikTok review. I literally just found free advertising for my book, and its not even finished yet. Obviously, I am pretty confident in ...

 It has been a while since my last post, and a lot has been happening. Some of it has been good, and some of it has been difficult. I have been doing a lot of writing lately, and I am in the fairly early stages of writing my first fiction novel. I think the audience for this is young adult, but it could also turn out to be a children's story. Since starting this blog, I have realized that my love of creative writing is growing, and I wanted to do something with this. The majority of my writing has been academic over the last decade, so this new genre really hits my artistic spark. What I have come to notice while putting this together is that it is so different from academic writing. I hadn't realized how different it actually was until I sat down and began to write. The mindset when sitting down to put words onto paper is the right/left brain distinction. I had the wonderful opportunity to begin discussing this process with a librarian, who has been so helpful in my process. I...