Well, hello there, fancy seeing you here !

My name is Florie Vine, and this is a quiet space I have crafted to talk about the books I’m writing.

Is this reasonable to start yet another new blog as an independant artist (meaning also content creator, accountant, community manager, marketing person, logistics person, etc.) and mother of the resident toddler?

No.

Did I still spend about six hours overhauling this wordpress theme and creating this site anyway?

Yes.

Why?

Because I’m an adult and I do whatever I want. (I’ll just curse my past self when I have yet another blog to update regularly).

But also, because I want to make space for writing in my life again, no matter how busy it is. And this space is a way for me to start carving it. If I don’t consciously choose to dedicate a bit of my time to the stories living in my head, there will always be a painting to finish first, an invoice to send, some e-mails to answer to, a diaper bin to empty or a laundry load to start instead.

This is an early morning in late summer as I write these words. It is Sunday and the local church bells just rang. It’s rained overnight so the morning sunlight is reflected in the puddles of water on the roof below my window. The trees are still green, except for the one who didn’t cope with the heat very well this summer. There is a coffee near my hand. The rest of the family still sleeps. There is a welcome stillness to the moment.

And I chose to dedicate it to writing this blog post.

What & how often will I write here ?

Mind you, I am quite aware that I am writing a blog post and not a scene from my story, which is why I don’t commit to a particular writing schedule here.

In my defense, the story I’m preparing right now isn’t quite ready for drafting yet. The Office of Discreet Enquiries is an old idea, written, beta-read and edited many times in French. In the past five years.

(Five years…)

So, I have decided to get this story out of the digital drawer and treat it as an old project. Because I have changed since then. I have read over six hundred books in the past four years (bless the e-readers) and I have a much clearer idea of my intentions here.

I’m keeping the ideas, characters and plot points I still like, and I’m changing all the rest. Which means, right now I’m still in the middle of the brainstorming phase. Who knows, I might write that new draft in November, like the NaNoWriMos of the past.

Anyway, so that means, this morning, I am writing this blog post. As you can see, I’ve planned for this space to be casual. It’s like the blogs of old, a bit of an online diary where I’ll write about whatever I want (mostly writing and/or reading related, though), whenever I want, as the words flow.

I do have a plan though : this space is meant to document my writing projects. This is where I’ll update you on where I’m at on the various series I have in mind (and hopefully, in the next few months, in the Scrivener too), what will be the next one to come out and where, etc.

I also plan to write a few bonus scenes, snippets and other extras, which I don’t plan to gatekeep behind some newsletter service, despite what my marketing experience says. There will be a newsletter someday though, if only to send release news to whomever is interested.

I don’t know how many people are still writing blogs out there and if anyone will be interested in following this journal. But at least, this is a very special place of mine to make space for writing in my own mind, and that is very precious indeed, to me at least.

If you are here and have read this welcome entry to the end, please do let me know what you’d be interested in reading more about. After all, this is still a public blog and not a private journal, so I’d like to bring valuable content to you guys.

In the meantime, thank you for being here. If you’re new around here, you can read more about me on this page, and follow me nowhere yet, but there will be a YouTube channel for the books I read and a Substack for more in-depths essays coming soon. I am not present on short-form social media, despite what my marketing experience tells me to do. And that won’t change.