Emily Howitt

So it’s that time of year again where everyone makes New Year’s resolutions. This will be the year I get skinny. This will be the year I quit smoking. This will be the year I become a millionaire and get a multi-media book deal. I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. While I believe it can be a great time to think about what you want in life, I feel like the hype of New Year’s resolutions will only last for a few weeks and then fall quietly into death. I could be wrong. There are probably lots of people who make resolutions and stick to them, but I don’t see the point of centering goals around one time of year. Or rather I do, but I think if you have a desire to change, you shouldn’t have to wait for a specific time to make that change. I’m all for goal setting, even if I haven’t had that much experience with it. But the thing with goals is that if you want them to work you really have to truly want them. It’s very easy to justify not doing them by thinking I’m too bus...

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord...1743. Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives. I bought this book by accident. How does one buy a book by accident? you ask. Well, I bought the eighth book, Written in my Heart’s Own Blood, not realizing it was the eighth book in a series. Then I decided since Outlander is insanely popular, I thought I’d give...

For those of you who read the Christmas short story teaser  here,  the rest of the story is now published. If you haven't read the teaser, here's a taste of what you'll be getting: Ever since she was little, Christmas has been a curse for Alicia. The holiday was always hell, no matter what she tried to do. Now she's told that if she doesn't find her soul mate by midnight, Christmas Eve, bad things will happen. Time is running out for Alicia. Can she find her true love, or is she too late?   This is a short story, so it's not a full length novel by any stretch. But it is only 0.99 cents US, and is quite the charming little Christmas story. Check it out if you like, or don't. But if you do decide to check it out, a review, even a few words, would be greatly appreciated. You can find it on: Amazon iBooks (Apple) Nook (Barnes and Noble) Kobo Inktera (Page Foundry) Wattpad It is also on Tolino, a German ebook market, although I cannot find any l...

So, you’re looking to survive the apocalypse….er….the Christmas season? No? You think you got it all together? Well think again. Christmas is coming. It’s not even American Thanksgiving and the Chrismasites are out in full swing. They’ll turn you. They’ll eat your brains. I mean, spread Christmas cheer? Even before November first, people (marketers and the crazies) were pumping out the Christmas horror cheer. Even I got in on this action, which you can see here  (ah, the shameless self-promotion). But wait, isn’t there like almost a month and a bit until Christmas? Exactly. Less than two months and constant Christmasites in action. You need a game plan. I need a game plan. We all need a game plan or we’re going to be buried under a mountain of shiny, sparkly, candy cane scented madness. So read on to find out how to survive the Christmas season. Embrace the Chaos Counterintuitive, I know, but you have to fight madness with madness. Your neighbour puts up their lights, y...

Time. Time is one of the single most valuable things in life, yet humans insist on wasting it. We insist on procrastinating. We insist on putting it off to another day, because we don’t feel like it (like we’ll ever feel like it), and we convince ourselves we worked hard and need a break. Maybe we did. Or maybe we trick ourselves into thinking we did more than we actually did. But maybe you don’t need this post. Maybe you don’t procrastinate, like, ever. If so, then go write a post about that and share your secrets with the world. But for the rest of us who are mere mortals, here’s some thoughts I’ve been having about why we need to treat the time we have as a precious gift. So why is time precious? Well, simply put you can’t buy more. You can’t find more. You don’t even know how much you have. You might have everything planned out for the next five years and then someone comes along and steals that time from you, and you have none left. You can’t even put time on hold for a w...

So, I know it's insanely early for Christmas, but it's, like, almost here...right? Anyway I'm putting out a Christmas short story around the beginning of November so I thought I would post the beginning here. It's going to be available on most major e-book sites, and I'm going to be serializing it on Wattpad (also, if you're interested I'll be writing later posts on how that works out). Essentially, the story is about finding true love in time for Christmas. Is it weird to be afraid of the dark but crave it like a hunger? To fear going out at night, but to love sitting in a house all alone, no lights, curtains wide, night rapidly falling, cool air rushing in? I feel like the night is the only time I can breathe. The daytime only reminds me of my misery. The night is when I can finally relax.              Alicia stopped writing in her diary. Her cat had crept over to her and demanded to be petted. It purred to life under ...

I suck at life. I know that’s a really dramatic thing to say, and let me be clear and say that I’m not looking for sympathy. I just need to express what I’m going through and maybe some other people out there also feel like they suck at life and this post will help them in some way. But then again it might just turn out to be a rant, so you might not want to read this if you’re not into rants. So I suck at life. I feel like I’ve done everything wrong in my life and that now I’ve messed up I can’t really fix it. I’ve never had a job. I never tried really hard to get a job when I was younger because I wanted to write in the summers. I did try to get a job for a while during the summers but I always applied too late for summer employment. Then I just stopped trying. Then I didn’t write as much as I could have in the summers. I was stupid. An idiot. That’s harsh but now I’m 22, finished four years of university, and have no experience. So if you’re young and you’re reading this, thi...