Get To Know Me Tag—Writer’s Edition

It’s a new year, so this seems like the perfect time to reintroduce myself here on the blog. Here are some quick facts about me, especially me as a writer!

Welcome to everyone who has started following me recently, and thank you for sticking around all of you who have been with me since this blog launched in 2018. (I can’t believe March will mark this blog’s five year anniversary!)

Thank you Lauren Watt at Lauren’s Easel for tagging me in this blogging challenge! (You may recognize her name from when I interviewed her last year. Please go check out the interview—Lauren is so encouraging!)

I hope you have fun reading this and learn something new about me, and I’d love if you take this as an invitation to participate in this tag as well. (I’ll tag some bloggers I think will be interested below.)

I’m glad for a simple blog post idea this month. Our Christmas plans got derailed when my dad got Covid, and then a few days later my mom caught it. Thanks to lots of prayers (and quarantining and cleaning ever-y-thing) I was able to avoid catching it. So our new year has been off to a rocky start and honestly feels like it hasn’t begun yet.

Writing this post has been a fun chance to think about writing and creating. I’m not putting pressure on myself to hit goals at the start of the year (winter is not kind to those of us with chronic illness) but rather to start dreaming about what I can create later once the weather and my health starts to improve some.

There’s plenty of time and plenty of the year yet to come…

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The Rules

   – link back to the person who created the tag (Savannah Grace Writes)
   – thank the person who tagged you
   – share the tag graphic (optional)
   – tag eleven bloggers

The Questions

Vital Stats And Appearance:

Name: Cassie Creley

Nicknames: My full name is Cassandra, so technically Cassie is a nickname!

Birthday: I have a February birthday.

Hair color and length: Blonde, almost to the base of my shoulder blades

Eye color: Blue

Braces/piercings/tattoos: I have pierced ears and I previously had braces. (Twice!)

Righty or lefty: Righty

Ethnicity: I loved getting my Ancestry results! I’m a third Norwegian, plus a great deal of English, Irish, and Scottish, with some German, French and Jewish. (Two of my great grandparents immigrated to the US from Norway.)

Firsts:

First novel written: My first novel that I began working on (and which I am still working on) is the start of a fantasy trilogy. I started dreaming up this story and its characters when I was 12.

First novel completed: I’ve yet to complete a novel, but I have written a novella.

Award for writing: I received a writing award at my community college, and I was nominated for another while pursuing my four year degree. I’m so grateful to the professors who encouraged me in my writing!

First publication: A poem in my college literary journal.

Conference: I was about to purchase tickets to my first writing conference about the time my health became much worse. I attended a virtual writers camp in November 2022 that I really enjoyed, and it was much more doable with my chronic illnesses. I’d love to attend a conference in person some day.

Query/Pitch: I pitched a few children’s books several years ago but I haven’t had the energy to do so in recent years. I have a handful of poems published, and I’m still working on getting some short stories and my novella a home. I haven’t been sending them out recently because I’m focusing my energy on my blog.

Favorites:

Novel (that you wrote): My novella and a fairy tale I wrote are my two completed favorites.

Genre: Fantasy, followed by historical fiction.

Author: Some of my favorites include Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Robin McKinley, and Scott Westerfeld

Writing Music: It really depends on what I’m writing. If I need to concentrate, no music. If I’m doing light editing, pop and alternative. If I need inspiration for a scene, I will often choose a favorite movie soundtrack, like Pride and Prejudice or Pirates of the Caribbean.

Time To Write: It depends on my energy levels. Sometimes mid-evening or after ten at night.

Writing Snack/Drink: I snack all the time, so I often have a glass of water and some trail mix or something made of chocolate on hand.

Movie: It’s so hard to pick, but The Lord of the Rings trilogy is at the top of my list. I also love La La Land, The Princess Bride, Pride and Prejudice, You’ve Got Mail, and The Mummy.

Writing Memory: This is such an interesting question, and I really had to think about it! I love instances where I’ve left the room to let someone read something I wrote, and I can hear them laugh out loud. Best feeling ever. One of my favorite moments when writing is when I have a bunch of ideas and suddenly the writing snippets seem to click into place and I can see the shape of the overall story. I wish I had better words to describe this feeling because its absolutely electrifying. I can picture how the story will unfold so clearly and it seems to come alive in my mind.

Childhood Book: Narnia and The Little House books stand out as favorites from a young age.

Currently:

Reading: The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, and Mamushka: Recipes from Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

Writing: Blog posts and a devotional book geared towards people with chronic illness.

Listening to: The Alisa Childers Podcast, Wild at Heart Podcast, and The Friendship Onion.

Watching: Cyrano, The Gilded Age, and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (the BBC version).

Learning: I’ve been watching various craft videos on YouTube showing how to make mini scrapbooks and resin crafts. I’m also praying about God’s word and Bible verse for my year and direction for the next 12 months, creatively and personally.

Future:

Want To Be Published: I’m waiting to hear if my short story will be published as part of a collection!

Indie or Traditional: From what I’ve researched, I think traditional would be the best fit for my novels.

Wildest Goal: To finish the books I have in various states of progress and get them into the hands of readers. It would absolutely make me so happy if someone created fan art of one of my characters!

Your turn:

Feel free to join in ladies!
Olivia Wolfertz at Unpolished Ponderings
Jenna Ziegler at The Comical Colon
Hailey Hudson
Katerina at Beauty in the Pain

Everyone is welcome to join in this tag—if you join, please let me know in the comments!

What are you reading/listening to/watching lately?
What are you working on writing?

 

You may also like:
Flexibility is Key—Creating with Chronic Illness
Reading List Printables to Keep Track of All Your Books
My Interview on Unpolished Ponderings

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