A Quick Update

The life of a writer is fun, rewarding, and sometimes frustrating.

I’ve run into a snag on the print book side of things for my upcoming novel, so I must delay Lowella toward the end of October while I sort through making sure the articles in the novel are legible in a 5x8 book format.

Not the end of the world, not how I wanted to spend my weekend, but I want the print book available as well as the e-book version at the same time.

At least being an independent artist affords us the luxury of changing things on the fly. The book itself is edited, primed, and ready to go, but the flavor text articles are not playing nice to my formatting.

Formatting issues aside, I’m happy with how the story shaped up in the end.

It’s a weird, weird, book, but I thought exploring the concepts of mental illness and streaming culture, as well as not-so-known mythologies made for an interesting story angle.

Numinous has shaped up to be a delightful story, and it won’t have these formatting issues,so it will be available in a bundle format with Lowella as well as Auminous. However, due to my perfectionism, it needs more time to polish.

And bundling takes up some time to format things correctly.

Both these stories lean toward the macabre, with one being more of a psychological horror and the other being more of a dark-humored mixture of genres.

Bundling them together seems right, to explore two sides of the horror genre.

Numinous will be standalone, so reading Auminous isn’t needed, though it will tie in succinctly to that story, seeing as it’s a continuation of the overarching story of the Occultus Ecclesia saga.

Spooky season always leads to fun stories to discover, and I’m sure these two stories will deliver on that front.

I have a sensitivity issue with Lowella’s content about the recent hurricane that has devastated the East Coast. The story is set during this time in the year 2027, and storms are a huge part of it. My heart goes out to all who have been affected by this major storm, Helene, the impact of which will be felt for years to come.

I didn’t downplay the effects of such storms in the novel, but seeing the devastation caused by Helene has framed it for me differently. The novel focuses on the cultural aspects of massive storms instead of the outright destruction, but it feels heavy knowing what has just happened to the east coast of the United States.

My next two books for 2024 will be The Last Key of Maestraumus and A Knight Stained Black, the former being the sequel to the last two Orchestrylus Odyssey books and the latter being a supernatural thriller about an incomprehensible being that forces married couples to play chess in a certain way.

This year has challenged me with writing. My fingers have become stiff and sore, and I’ve realized while I could use dictation to lighten the load on them, I write faster with the keyboard itself.

Next year, I want to write in longhand a new series to see how that challenges me to think things through before committing the words to paper.

I believe keeping a pace of five books a year will be ideal for me, seeing as I like to revise and revise and revise until I feel satisfied. No book is ever coming out perfect, that just doesn’t happen. But I want to tell fun stories and deconstruct the culture in the process.

I don’t foresee any other delays for the rest of the year. But at least I’ll have met my goal.