Nancy Drew is 92!

Hello fellow sleuths! Today is Nancy Drew's 92nd birthday, and I've been pretty busy!

Before I dive into what I've been doing, let's take a quick moment to reflect on the origins of this beloved character. Way back in 1930, the Edward Stratemeyer Syndicate released the first 3 Nancy Drew books: The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, and The Bungalow Mystery. Using the pseudonym Carolyne Keene, several ghost writers starting with Mildred Wirt Benson began to shape the future of mystery stories featuring a strong female protagonist. Several decades later, HeR Interactive would release the first digital Nancy Drew mystery that began an award-winning game series which broke records and screamed to the world that girls loved video games as much as boys. Since 1930, Nancy Drew has been interpreted in several languages and developed into many forms of media with a wealth of women taking on the role of the famed girl detective from River Heights.

For those that may have missed it, I premiered my new short film "Sonny's Gift" on YouTube this morning! It was great fun to see everyone's reactions in real time. If you missed it, you can view the video here:

I also put together a short behind the scenes video where I talked about the short film and included several bloopers. You can watch that video right here as well:

The reception was wonderful, but my two favorite responses came from two of the actors themselves: Lani Minella (Nancy Drew) and Jamal Fahim (Sonny Joon). I sent them a link to the video as I had promised I would back in 2020, and the responded with very kind words. Super cool!

Now I want to discuss some behind the scenes stuff which I've been thinking about for a long time and have finally initiated. As I'm sure you've noticed, there's been a surge of fan-made Nancy Drew merchandise over the last couple years. I have made my own merchandise, but have never sold any of it. Part of the reason was simply just where I was at in life with mental, living, and financial spaces. I feel the time has finally come to setup shop and start selling some of the items I have made alongside the other items in my shop. I don't have a definitive date as to when I will open up shop yet, but I'm hoping to get things started by the end of May! Hopefully that should give me enough time to finish all the prep work. I accomplished a lot today regarding setting up things on the backend of the website, but there's still a lot to do. I can't wait until I can start shipping!

I hope you were able to enjoy Nancy's birthday in some sort of fashion! Did you play any of the games? Read any of the books? Watch any of the movies or shows? Let me know in the comments!

That about wraps up this post. Until next time, detectives!

Huw