It is with equal parts excitement and nerves (?!) that I share this: I’ve just booked my debut novel in with an editor! I am really keen to dig into this part of the process, I’m sure I’ll be learning a lot.

Locking in details and dates got me thinking back to just how much I’ve learnt in this process so far. I started drafting this book almost 5 years ago now and I’ve written and rewritten 9 drafts of the book. I remember seeing other authors doing draft after draft on their manuscripts and thinking how tedious it must be. I wanted to avoid that! How wrong I was.

Those drafts have been absolutely essential to making this story stronger, but more importantly it’s forced me to learn about and grow in the craft of writing. I learnt what kinds of scenes I found easy to write, and those I didn’t. I discovered the parts that were missing in my writing, the parts I needed to sit down and be really intentional about including. I learnt about the words I overuse, the writing tools I repeat a little too often, and the kind of expression I need to practice. It taught me how to overlap all the character arcs I have going into one cohesive story. You can’t learn all this just by talking about it, you have to do it.

It’s been messy! But in starting to draft my next book I’m feeling so much more skilled up, confident and fluent in what I’m trying to express. That only came from the very bumpy road that has been this first book.

I’ll be working with a very skilled and experienced editor, Kat Betts. She has so much knowledge to share about writing in my genre, I’ll be writing a lot of notes along the way. I’ll be keeping you in the loop with what the process is like! It’ll be big, another big learning curve, I have no doubt. But thanks for being here, reading this, and listening to my rambles about this very scrappy journey!

Hope you have a good week,

COMING IN 2027

Slated for 2027 release

The battle to save Earth and the Realm has begun.

It’s time the Prince’s power, and his last army, was released.