The light at the end of the tunnel?
After the wallowing.
Refocusing on process definitely helped me to get back on track with my writing and book illustrations. I restarted my 40-minutes sprints—everybody has 40 minutes to write every day, right? I am not a morning person, and concentrating on my art and back-office comes easier to me during the day, so I moved my writing and book illustration sprints to after 6:00pm. 40 minutes seems to be my Goldilocks zone for writing sprints. The rule is to sit down no matter what and give it a go. I often get into the flow and forget about time, so I set an upper limit to 80 minutes, mainly because I need to switch to the book illustrations. So, how far did I get?
Little wins to celebrate
Book Three, The Spheres (still a working title)
The first walk-through of the scene spine focused on scenes featuring Eass and Tayl and is completed—beginning, middle, end. I am now working through the loose ends left over from Book One and Two, as well as a lot of only hinted-at backstory, and now have a complete back story for Lynn Wayward and how her life is intertwined with the Builders and the events that lead to the divide.
And, I need to confess that I added another sheet to the outline—ouch—for new locations. For me, locations tell a part of the story and should be close to the overall theme.
I feel I am almost ready to start writing, but based on previous experience, I’ll flesh out the outline a bit further.
Book Two, The House, locally printed edition
Yes, looking at the costs, it still feels pointless to print the New Zealand edition. But I’ll stick to the plan and print a very small edition. Which means I need to refocus on the book illustrations. I feel I am sooo bad at this—I mean, there is so much incredible talent out there, so why am I even trying to do this? I am not getting better, neither is the process getting easier. To find a way through this, I decided to only add part title page illustrations to the maps and notebook pages I created for the KDP edition.
After running through too many concepts to count, I have come back to the first ideas for “Part One, Shadows”, focusing on the first encounter between the Eass and the Raven. I sketched the complete scene with the gate, poster, and the fire escape, then threw all that work away and kept it very simple, focusing on the Raven sitting on the gate’s shadow. The light is adding some drama, but contradicts how the shadows sit on the brick wall, maybe something I just need to get over.
Lessons learned—this is not coming easy to me.
Other book news
Currently reading/listening?
I finished reading Rose/House by Arkady Martine, the author of the Teixcalaan Series—not 100% sure what to make of it. After a quick dive into Children of Time, I decided to switch to Lives of Bitter Rain, both by Adrian Tchaikovsk. I re-listened to Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan (still love it) and picked up the audiobook edition of Middle England by Jonathan Coe, which I unexpectedly—not my genre—utterly enjoyed. I won’t tell you about the DNF and utter drivel I am listening to just because they are free at my library and keep my busy mind occupied.
That’s about it for now. More soon (づ ᴗ _ᴗ)づ♡
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New here? I write adult fantasy that sits somewhere between dystopia, post-apocalyptic fiction, and science fiction—complex, a little dark, unapologetically nerdy.
I’ve published two books in a trilogy called The Spheres—The Fragments (2022), The House (2025)—and am working on Book Three. If you enjoyed this post, why not sign up to my newsletter or get a free review copy?
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