Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 5hhappy enough with Adelaide’s scissors for now — might add some branches or a word or two (but what?!)— Auntie Whispers’ bell is proving trickier to finish. I’m a little out of practice, since I put my embroidery mostly aside in favor of finishing the manuscript for the last few months 040
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 04/10/2026for any writers, organizers, people who are knowledgeable about events—a friend is planning a book festival, the sort where you set up a table to sell your books to attendees. she has asked me for advice and I just don’t have the expertise. thoughts, advice, ideas welcome 💗 feel free to share. 163
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Sunday morning, coffee in bed, and my new embroidery project 050
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 03/10/2026#lithodgepodge Visual art isn’t my talent, but I couldn’t let the day pass without saying how impressed I am with all the art and visuals I’m seeing of your characters. How does it feel to not only be able to invent characters and stories but also to depict them? Such a wealth of talent out here 🙌 071
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 03/10/2026I’m pleased with this draft for now and plan to do a final round of line edits in a week or so. It’s chilly and rainy and I’m going to make a cup of tea and work on some hand embroidery 150
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 02/10/2026My debut is almost 7 years old! With rights reverting back to me at the end of this month, the book will no longer be available to buy as of 10/30 (in its current form, for now). So if you think you might care to read this story about a grouchy fortune-teller with a heart of gold, now's the time 🌟🌙bookshop.orgBefore You Go: A heartbreaking page turner about love, loss and family"I was hooked from page one... my heart was broken... So beautifully written... extremely beautiful and emotional!" Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The bond between a mother and daughter is meant to be unbr... 363
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 02/10/2026answers to this one are a joy to read, well done everybody 💗 since a good deal of my manuscript has higher emotional stakes I enjoyed imagining what it would be like to see my characters on the Great British Bake-Off. the meltdowns and tantrums would be hilarious. #lithodgepodge 2181
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 02/10/2026moonflowers really showing off this year. love a night-blooming flower 051
Reposted by Kelly HeardMike Wiser @drmikewiser.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Remember: Darwin's note of "I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything" was written on Oct 1 (1861). Thus we are free to celebrate Very Poorly And Very Stupid Hatred Day today. 2283126
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 01/10/2026#lithodgepodge I’m Kelly, I write upmarket contemporary that usually lands somewhere between women’s fiction (whatever that is) and southern gothic. I like ghosts and trees. I am heavily invested in the pathetic fallacy. I’ve got 4 published novels and working on a 5th (two chapters left in edits!) 1161
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 01/10/2026#5amwritersclub, I have just four chapters left to edit before I’m (almost) done with my manuscript. I will be scarce on here until it’s through because I am so easily distracted but the end to this project may actually, finally be in sight, let’s GO 190
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 30/09/2026please, distract me before I cause more emotional damage to myself by hyperfixating on finishing chapter 39 *collapses onto fainting sofa* ask me things about writing craft, books, music (or birds, you know I love birds) and I will do my best to answer ask.zyntaks.ca/ask/meankell...ask.zyntaks.caAsk meankellyjean.bsky.social!Ask meankellyjean.bsky.social a question on BlueAsk! 020
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I put dishwasher soap in the carpet shampooer and now the living room is just bubbles. I may be a mediocre novelist but I’m also a terrible housekeeper 161
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 29/09/2026ch38: No girl, no!!!! Go get your man! (I do think the moment when a certain type of hero finally chooses courage lands better when we have to wait for it, but it hurts watching her choose to be a coward when the stakes are what they are) 030
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Once at preK dropoff, a mom said “you’re so sweet and kind, I bet you write love stories. Which one should I read first?” 😬 Okay, do you want the love story where the ghost tries to drown her sister in the swamp, or the one with the opium poppies and the talking stained glass window?static.klipy.comDisney Princess Ariel's Embarrassed SmileALT: Disney Princess Ariel's Embarrassed Smile 370
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 27/09/2026“I can adopt a rescue cat, as a treat? Just one?”—“Yeah sure thing if you stay on task for once in your life until the major plot action concludes” 040
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 27/09/2026just eight more chapters to edit (okay, some of them need some light rewriting) and I’ll be done with this pass. the feral cat is in quarantine until the last chapter 030
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 27/09/2026this protagonist is determined to adopt a feral cat 030
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 26/09/2026several years of bad choices and metaphorical deals with the devil 070
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I suppose when you get down to it we don’t need to talk about ghosts here in chapter 34. That’s me, killer of darlings. 800 words lighter and moving on 170
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 25/09/2026turns out if you play Joan Jett loud enough you can just forget you were in a weird mood to begin with 030
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 24/09/2026do you ever get so tired of feeling like a weathervane all the time that you just go on autopilot for three hours getting all the housework done and then suddenly snap to and find you’re crying into the dishes over all the orphaned subplots? good, me neither 170
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 23/09/2026tonight is the first night it’s been temperate enough to sleep with the windows open since March. God bless Libra season 050
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 22/09/2026ch33 is a downer but thankfully it’s mostly fine as is, just needs polishing and a few copy editing tweaks, so I don’t need to spend much time in sadness world) then it’s on to 34 (and 35—I’d like to somehow reshape both of them into one singular chapter) 120
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 21/09/2026the gorgon at her day job (kidding, I’m working on my Halloween costume) 070
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 21/09/2026I’m late to this one, but easy answer—the backstory is sadder, harder, etc. She’s a post-ruin type of heroine. We’re emotionally post-apocalyptic. This isn’t even really a love story. It’s a regret story, as in: how will you leverage your regret for good, when it is all you can salvage? 180
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 21/09/2026I deleted a couple of dead-end false start subplots from my first few chapters, rewrote ch7, edited ch33, and then: woke up before 6, made breakfast, got the children off to school, and started the laundry. I may have only slept for four hours but I am extremely pleased with myself 280
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 20/09/2026today in 1923 an anonymous critic wrote of T S Eliot’s The Wasteland that “he can no longer refuse to recognize the limitations of his medium; he is sometimes walking very near the limits of coherency.” The occasional bad review really is part of the fun 150
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 20/09/2026i am absolutely inconsolable that i already used the line "go throw your jacket over a puddle for someone else" in my fourth novel because it is perfect for this scene 050
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 20/09/2026edited through ch32. those noises in the library? not ghosts. there is someone in the house. it’s not what she thinks. the rest of the story is maximum stakes and drama from here on out (maximum stakes in terms of my gentle, southern gothic, deeply-feeling stories) so, I think, the rest will be fun 160
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 18/09/2026just a former manic pixie dream girl and all-around tempestuous relationship haver, humming “called a problem child cause I got too wild, but now that’s how I’m gettin paid” every time I get a royalties check for my books about modern-day sirens and sailors and real life monsters 170
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 14/09/2026when I look back at my notes from grad school these days it’s no wonder I didn’t finish the program - my heart was really somewhere else entirely. Not somewhere completely unliterary but certainly not somewhere academic. Anyway, on this date in 2011: 090
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 11/09/2026is it even a camping trip if you don’t metaphorically limp home swearing you’ll never go camping again 051
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 09/09/2026you can never have too many dogs or silk scarves at the beach 150
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 07/09/2026and the signifieds butt heads with the signifiers and we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words when across the sky sheet the impossible birds in a steady illiterate movement homewards (from “this side of the blue” by Joanna Newsom) 040
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 07/09/2026she reads classics. it’s a strange coincidence but her favorite books and poems are all in the public domain and can be quoted in a novel without jumping through any copyright hoops. in my zero draft she toted around a copy of The Virgin Suicides but I felt it was a little heavy-handed 1110
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 05/09/2026I love the #songsofseptember game. So impressed with the level of detail I see in the responses! I wish I had, like, a playlist or something so I could participate. I’m just not that organized, and when it comes to music it’s more a question of what strikes my fancy on any given day 470
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 05/09/2026i’ll be living in a tent on the beach this week so either mute me now or enjoy this interruption to your usual programming 😘 160
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 03/09/2026I’ve often had to tell myself very sternly that extended descriptions of trees, water, sun- or moonlight on water, birds, you get the idea, that those lengthy and plot-irrelevant descriptions have their place and all, but they don’t sell 071
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 02/09/2026Buttons is a delightful prompt and do I ever have the passage for it but I’m sorry I’m trying to keep this account PG-13. I’m not blushing, you’re blushing 170
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 02/09/2026I didn’t know how badly I needed Star Wars dialogue bubble stickers but I guess the world still has things to teach us. They’re all over the house, needless to say 020
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 02/09/2026maybe my workflow is never going to be steady and predictable maybe I will always have bursts of inspiration followed by a few days of exhaustion maybe it’s just my destiny and I’ve been wasting energy trying to be a different writer than the one I am 160
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 02/09/2026without saying your age, what is your favorite movie that came out when you were 20 years old? (the way this movie became a part of the emotional lexicon for a certain type of sad girl back then almost defies explanation. I guess you just had to be there)static.klipy.comKate Winslet as Clementine Kruczynski: Excuse Me?Alt: Kate Winslet as Clementine Kruczynski: Excuse Me? 150
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 31/08/2026Turns out I pasted one chapter into my new document twice over but without a heading so searching the word “chapter” wasn’t finding it 🤡 150
Kelly Heard @meankellyjean.bsky.social · 31/08/2026feeling optimistic that the end is in sight during #5amwritersclub today: ch26 cleaned up easily; nearing the end of act 2; manuscript is at 60k/90k words edited 3120