End of June Roundup

It’s been a funny ole’ year, as we say here in the UK. It’s all felt very surreal with serious health concerns I still haven’t fully processed and a long awaited return to my career. This update is more of an update for the year, then this month, but let’s go with it.

The Ilia’s Lovers - is now being serialised on Ream starting on July 7th. I’m 38 chapters into a 40 chapter book, so I’m days away from finishing the novel after waiting so long. At the moment, I’m taking a break recovering from a massive infection I had at the beginning of the month, but as soon as I feel better I’m going to finish the book and start the second book in this duology.

Teyr - this book is now fully plotted, and I have the first 3 chapters written. Syve is staring at me through her dark eyes a silent plea to get on with her book. As soon as The Ilia’s Lovers is done, I’ll write this.

On the subject of Klevian Warriors, I’m currently serialising Tacori on Wattpad. I’ve had my novellas up there since late last year. The story will be removed at the end of July and in August I’ll start serialising Galidin. My hope is that I’ll start seriealising Teyr on Ream just before I finish Galidin and then start seriealising on Wattpad a few weeks later. My hope is to attract some of those readers to my Ream and maybe to the community at large. Maybe they’ll fall in love with Tessa while they’re on there and start reading the Tessan Universe.

Uneasy Accord - I’m preparing a second rewrite. Every time I think I’m done with this book, it tells me all about the things I’ve missed. This last rewrite will be the most comprehensive and the final one, she said more to convince herself than anyone else. I want to get this book finished before the end of the year, at which point I will have been working on it for two years and that’s enough. So, at the end of this year I will be finishing the book and start sending it to publishers. I love this book. The story is brilliant, but it’s also a much more complex book than I’ve ever written and that means it needs more work than the rest of my stories. I want to give it the opportunity to be publishable by a publishing house. If no one takes it, I will publish it myself, but I want to make it the best I can so it at least has a chance.

Having said that, I’ve been entertaining the idea of serialising the book as I do this rewrite. It would diminish the chances of being published, but the more I think of the traditional model, the less I care about it. I think I want to be published just to say I have been professionally published, rather than thinking about what that model of publishing has to offer me. I know that writing the next book in the series will take a couple of years. I want each book to be the very best version it can be, and book series don’t often take off until the fourth or fifth book in the series which can mean many authors lose their contracts before their books have a chance to gain their readership. Why would I do that to myself? So yeah, I have a big decision to make about Uneasy Accord, but I already have an amazing cover, so I have a feeling I’ll be serialising the book. Keep an eye out.

My health - At the moment, I’m still exhausted. It’s so frustrating because after my operation, after the recovery, I felt so good and now it feels like it’s all undone. I still have pain in my pelvis where the infection was, but is this ghost pain or is the infection still there? Until my blood test on the 4th I have no way of knowing. I’ve never lived with medical anxiety before and I don’t like how it feels, but those 12 days in hospital were the worst 12 days I’ve had in decades and I really don’t want to repeat it. So wish me luck.

It really is so nice to be back. To have ownership of my career again. I’m going slower this time. Taking weekends off. I’m not going to publish as many books, but I’m back and it feels so good.