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It's been a minute since I did an update for Novel #4. I was hoping to do a final edit pass during my 7 hour round trip flight this past weekend, but instead, I only edited about a quarter of the book with 100 more pages to go. :(

This weekend, I have to do my taxes (gahhh), so I'm not sure how much more progress I'll be able to make, but I'll definitely try to finish. In addition to line edits, I've flagged a few scene-level changes that need to be made, so I have no idea how long this is going to take, really.

BUT. Part of why I made so little progress editing Novel #4 is that...I couldn't stop myself from working on Novel #5.

Whomp whomp.

Novel #5 is my horror story. It once again tackles issues of mental health, so that's probably why I've felt drawn to it. But weirdly, I feel like horror and romance writing...actually have a lot in common, and that's why this feels more "comfortable" for me to write? Both of them are about the slow burn and building up to an emotional climax.

Novel #5 is 9k words right now (eek!). I've been torn on whether or not to actually work on this, or to take a break from writing after I finish editing Novel #4. But now I have an outline (oops) and I've been thinking the first draft wordcount target would be 50k words, so...maybe I will jump into this after I finish editing Novel #4?

Maybe the difference will be that I won't try to rush the first draft for this the way I did for Novel #4. Especially since horror really needs to be about the atmosphere, possibly more than any other genre. I think I'd try drafting it slowly, stopping to rewrite as necessary in order to get the descriptions where I want them to be rather than pushing through and ending up with a crappy draft that I feel bad about.

I also wanted to talk about process for a minute.

It feels weird to tell non-writers that I'm still refining and understanding my own writing process even after 4+ books (more like 8-ish books if I count the novels I wrote in college). But other writers have said that the process can change even from one book to another, and I totally believe that.

I've always been in between outlining and not outlining. That is, I usually do write an outline—because I can't start writing a book unless I have a sense of the beginning, key middle scenes, and the ending—but the outline is extremely vague apart from the beginning/middle/end scenes I already have a clear idea for.

But with this horror story? I actually loved writing a semi-detailed outline.

I still followed my normal process of starting with writing scenes that jump all over the story, order-wise. I think this is a necessary part of my process because it helps me think through my characters and plot through writing and come up with turning-point scenes that make the dreaded middle less disastrous. But I decided to sit down and write an outline when I was about 9k words into the book, and it actually flowed quite easily. I'm sure it will change when I draft the book, but it was really helpful to have a bird's-eye view of the story and force myself to think about pacing at an early stage.

I think outlining worked for this story because it's a slow burn horror and because the unsettling feelings come from layering uncomfortable events in a specific order. For Novel #4, my mystery, I also wrote (or tried to write) an outline, but I got bogged down by the details of the investigation and had a hard time with pacing for that reason. I definitely feel like I do better (at this point in my writing career) with emotion-driven stories that rely on the slow burn and emotional build up.

So...yeah! All of this is to say that Novel #5 feels like it'll be a nice palate-cleanser after Novel #4 and, considering I literally have not been able to stop myself from working on this story, I'm excited to dive in.

Even though this is a new genre for me. Even though—more worryingly—I don't know if this is marketable (I haven't seen a traditionally published horror story with a queer male protagonist before) or whether my agent would shoot this down for causing branding chaos (as I mentioned in my previous entry).

But the traditional publishing process has been a crapshoot lately, and I'm going to work on whatever story makes me happy and keeps me sane.

Strengths and weaknesses

I feel kind of embarrassed that it's taken writing, like, 4+ books for me to finally identify what my strengths and weaknesses as a writer are, but apparently that's the case.

My strength is writing emotions. My weakness is writing actions.

This...probably explains why I struggle with writing (1) action scenes, and (2) investigation interview scenes. Any kind of scene where it's just mechanical plot stuff happening, I always have an issue with hating my output because I think the scene is too mechanical and poorly written.

(Am I right or am I just being too hard on myself? Who knows...)

Process

I've mentioned, a lot, that I write books out of order. I've been reflecting on this a lot more lately.

When I say I write out of order, I mean two things: (1) When a story idea first comes to me and is "ready" to be written, so to speak, I usually start with flashes of ideas regarding the beginning, key turning point scenes in the middle, and maybe the end, so I write what comes to me first and they just happen to be out of order; (2) While drafting, if I'm struggling with a scene, I usually skip it to something that's easier to write in order to maintain drafting momentum.

I think (1) ties into the fact that I usually start with the emotions of a story—because when I know the emotional arc of a story right away, I know how that arc starts, how it evolves, and how it ends. And because I'm a discovery writer at my core, writing whatever scene comes to my head first also really helps me get to know the characters at the beginning of a project. For example, if I know I need a scene in the middle where Character A argues with Character B, I might think, okay, how would Character A react in this argument? What does that say about who they are? And how do I build scenes that come before so that all of this makes sense? Dialogue and character interactions are the parts of a book that are the most unplanned for me—I often find a scene not turning out exactly the way I think because of how the dialogue is flowing. And those unexpected discoveries are what make the story interesting and exciting for me.

Side note on character development: I used to be the type of author who filled out long character sheets for my protagonists, but I don't really do that anymore. Instead, I build all my characters around a few basic questions:

1. What do they want?
2. What are they scared of/insecure about?
3. What's their basic personality?
4. Does all of this make sense considering their background?

After all, what makes characters unique is, in my opinion, the complex interactions between these aspects. Everything else—things like hobbies, favorite music, quirky habits—are kind of just window dressing. But the most important thing for writing a story is understanding your protagonist(s), because if you don't have a core understanding of your protagonist(s), the story isn't compelling and the reader can tell.

Anyway, back to out-of-order writing.

One thing I've been thinking about is whether my out-of-order process works better for some genres than others. For romance, it works well for me. I suspect it may also work well for a horror, so I'm going to try it when I draft my horror novel. Why? Because in books like these, you generally have a clear emotional goal you're building toward. In romance, it's the building up of the romantic relationship. In horror—at least, the kind of horror I enjoy and want to try writing—it's the growing unease and discomfort until the what and why of the horror is revealed. And so coming up with scenes out of order almost feels like laying down stepping stones on a path that you start with a clear vision of, then going in later to connect the dots from Point A to B to C to D.

For mystery, I found this approach...suboptimal.

And I think that may be because mystery is a much more intricate dance of red herrings and subplots and misleading while making sure everything still makes sense, which makes it easier to lose sight of pacing when you write out of order. (You won't believe how many charts and diagrams I had to make for my mystery plot as I was revising.)

I guess I started with my out-of-order method for Novel #4 because I did start with an idea about the emotional romantic subplot before I put the mystery together. But, if I ever write a mystery again in the future, I would try harder to stick to a chronological/linear drafting process.

So...I'm a branding nightmare when it comes to writing.

I've written across a varied spectrum of genres: fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, contemporary romance...and I just got an idea for a horror novel.

Lol.

But here's the reason why I write in different genres:

I am usually a themes-driven writer.

Which means I come up with the theme/message of a story first, and then select a genre second as the vehicle for that theme/message.

Nowhere is that more obvious than the story behind Novel #3. When I was reading back over my trunked fragments of novels I attempted and then abandoned before drafting Novel #3, I realized I had worked on 2 or 3 novels that tried to encapsulate the same themes that I finally captured in Novel #3 (immigrant burnout and stigmatization of mental health issues in Asian American communities).

Two of those were contemporary romances, like Novel #3. But one of them...was not. It was a speculative, superhero (!!) romance.

And my horror idea circles the same theme. (Maybe I, as an author, am haunted by certain themes and will keep writing them until I have a traditionally published novel.)

It's tough, because this is, once again, where the art and business of writing clash. Publishers expect you to write in one genre and stick to it for the purposes of brand recognition. But some authors write in a variety of genres because, well, that's where the muse takes us.

My dream is to one day be an author like Silvia Moreno-Garcia or Jesse Q. Sutanto--someone who is allowed to dabble in multiple genres because their name itself has become the brand.

I can dream, at least.

I came across some tweets from a woman of color who was asking if anyone else was struggling with burnout when they tried to turn their writing into a career, and all I could think was...yep, I'm there right now.

I don't think enough people talk about how much the grind mindset has been drilled into authors: Because the publishing industry is, for the most part, out of anyone's control, authors are always told the only thing that is within their control is writing another book.

Can't land an agent? Write another book.

Can't sell your book on submission? Write another book.

Not earning enough money from your published book(s)? Write another book.

One thing I've noticed from talking to non-writers is that people vastly underestimate how much time and labor it takes to write a book. I've heard people express astonishment at the idea that writing books takes enough time/effort to be a full-time job at all.

Another thing people don't talk about is the simple toll that constant rejection takes. Especially when you're a marginalized author. It becomes exceptionally difficult to keep writing when you're told that books about people like you won't sell, that there's no market for it, that no one cares.

So maybe you give up on the book of your heart and try to write something more "commercial." Except that's pressure, too. There is tremendous pressure and exhaustion in approaching something as a job when you're not even being paid for your labor and you have no idea if you will ever be paid for your labor.

I'm feeling that exhaustion right now.

I did love Novel #4 when I started it, but I've been so stuck in the weeds for revisions that I'm beginning to feel exhausted. I've taken maybe one or two days off from working on it every other month and barely feel rested when I return to it again.

You know the saying that you should write what you love, because you'll have to read your own novel 1000 times by the time it gets published (if it ever gets published)? Yeah. I'm starting to wonder if that was easier for me when I wrote romance, because I can reread scenes of romantic angst 100 times and never get bored. But rereading scenes of mystery investigation is much less interesting, at least to me.

Once I finish revising this book—whenever that is—I honestly want to take a break from writing. I'm exhausted, both by drafting and by the horrible submission experience I've had for Novel #3. I need a break. I need to focus on things other than writing, and maybe by that point, I'll have remembered what writing for joy feels like again.

Welp, I've been having a really unlucky reading year so far. I've already mentioned that I might have to give up reading romance altogether, given how negative my experience has been with reading traditionally published romance novels. But so far, I've only enjoyed Network Effect by Martha Wells and You'll Be the Death of Me by Karen M. McManus out of the 16 or so books I've picked up this year.

I still have hopes for the Chinese fantasy novels coming out this year (I'm reading Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan this month, A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin comes out this month, and I'm dying to read Xiran Jay Zhao's Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor), plus the other books on my 2022 TBR post. But...I don't know, I'm losing hope a bit. :(

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim

Genre: YA fantasy

Probably a DNF. I might skim the ebook for this later.

This Asian-inspired fantasy has such rave reviews; plus, I liked Spin the Dawn by the same author, so I thought I would have a good time with this. The synopsis for the sequel sounded so intriguing, too; yes please to Asian-inspired books that take place in the realm of dragons.

All I can say is...did I read the same book that other people have been praising so much? Because the plotting for this was all over the place.

The inciting incident doesn't happen until two hours into the audiobook. That's a whole lot of time spent on stuff that isn't related to the main plot. Yes, I liked Seryu's character, but I don't think it's good craft to spent 20% of a book on an unrelated side plot that is mostly to set up the sequel, just saying.

Shiori was so reckless and impulsive that I put the book down multiple times because her decisions made me cringe so hard. Also...I didn't like the way the "forbidden magic" trope was used here. I could accept it if it was woven into the world, for example, the way it was executed in Descendant of the Crane by Joan He. But here, it just felt random and a tired cliché.

I normally love Emily Woo Zeller, the audiobook narrator. But she intentionally used a higher-pitched voice for this book—I guess to capture Shiori's young age—plus her voice for Kiki the paper crane was practically a screech, and the audiobook just ended up grating on my ears. I'm so sad.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Genre: Adult, historical fantasy, mystery

DNF.

I've been looking for fantasy mystery books to read since I'm writing my own, and so far I've struck out 3 out of 3 times.

This book was published a while ago, but I've heard it cited as a good example of a fantasy mystery. Except I just...don't like it. The fantasy aspect of it is definitely strange, a kind of alternate history England with time travel—though that's not the focus of the story—and literary crimes?

Overall, I found it confusingly written. It starts as an investigation of the theft of a book, but then turns into...I don't even know what. I guess it involves the theft of Jane Eyre, somehow? I can't really bring myself to care. The thief/murderer identity is obvious from the start, so this doesn't really feel like a conventional mystery. The antagonist also reminds me of Kilgrave from Jessica Jones—he just seems so overpowered that I don't feel invested in the story or how the good guys are going to triumph over him. His power level just seems way too excessive compared to the rest of the world that it doesn't make sense in my brain.

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

Genre: Adult thriller

DNF/skimmed.

I picked this up solely because of the hype, but this didn't manage to overcome my Adult Thriller reading curse.

I really don't like the thriller trope of "woman drinks too much/takes drugs and is treated as unreliable by everyone in the story," which is present here. I also frankly don't care for thrillers about the daughters of serial killers.

I'll also say that I had two guesses as to the identity of the killer early on, and the right answer turned out to be one of those two. So overall, this is just a boring thriller, in my opinion.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh

Genre: YA fantasy

Probably a DNF.

I picked this up because of the buzz, and also because it reminded me of a manhwa I once read (I think it was called The Water God's Bride?).

But...I really loathe the trope of "female character loses her voice," so as soon as that showed up in the third chapter, I was like...nope.

Among Thieves by MJ Kuhn

Genre: Adult fantasy

I actually finished this book!! (I mean, I read half of it and then skimmed the rest, but hey, that's better than the rest of the books on this list.)

This book had a killer premise, only to fail to live up to/execute its premise well. Which is a shame.

I'll start with the positive, which was that it was easy to read. As for the cons, well...

First: The world was boring. It was a generic, grimy, dirty, Edgy pseudo-European city. I don't think the worldbuilding is underbaked; I think it's just not that interesting.

Second: I didn't care for half of the characters. Ryia and Tristan were the most interesting by virtue of the fact that both had secrets in their past...but Tristan's secret was pretty easy to guess, so it wasn't a surprise to me. Evelyn was maybe the character with the most defined character arc. Nash and Ivan were boring as hell. I didn't care about them, and I didn't care about their romance at all.

I also didn't care for Tristan's cringeworthy crush on Ryia and wondered why it had to be in the book. I think this book was trying to go for a found family idea to counterbalance the fact that each character has a reason to betray the others, but...it kind of failed. I was never convinced that the characters cared for each other, outside of the romantic pairings.

Third: The heist was dull.

Upon reflection, I think a compelling heist book needs at least 1 of 2 things: (1) twists and turns in the heist itself, and/or (2) really cool set pieces. This book, unfortunately, had neither. Yes, the team encounters a few obstacles and has to readjust their plan on the fly, but not in a way that felt particularly interesting. And the set pieces were boring as well.

Fourth: There was barely any scheming.

The premise of this book was "a team of thieves has to pull of a heist while each planning to betray the others." I expected scheming to that effect, but there were only two moments of double-crossing (one of which had very little impact since it seemed to be setting up for a conflict in the sequel).

So...yeah. Sadly, this was a disappointment.

Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell

Genre: Adult fantasy

Trigger warnings: Rape (both off-page and on-page), torture

Another book I actually finished!!

Out of the entire list of books on this page, this was probably my favorite read...except (1) it's in a genre I don't enjoy (grimdark fantasy), and (2) I had a few serious reservations with it.

I picked it up because of the audiobook narrator, Joe Jameson (who also narrated Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall), and the audiobook is absolutely phenomenal. I'm not sure I would have made it through this book if it wasn't for his narration.

By far the strongest parts of the story were (1) Falcio's narration plus the banter among Falcio, Kest, and Brasti (which...makes it kind of unfortunate that over 50% of the book takes place with Falcio separated from Kest and Brasti), and (2) the concept of the Greatcoats. It was a joy to read about how the Greatcoats operated and Falcio's schemes to win his battles.

As I mentioned above, this is grimdark fantasy. There is a lot of violence and torture—although, oddly, Falcio gets magically healed after his torture session, which makes me question why the torture scene is even there except to be Edgy and Grim. Riju seems to have been written specifically to be The Worst City To Ever Exist, like a medieval grimdark fantasy version of Gotham City. But I did sort of like how Falcio sticks to his morals and principles in the face of a crapsack world, so there was some level of meta-level questioning of the grimdark world.

What I disliked the most about this book were the Straight Male Author-Isms. (Continued under the cut due to mention of rape.)

( Content warning: Mention of rape beow )

I'm So (Not) Over You by Kosoko Jackson

Genre: Adult contemporary romance

I'm about halfway through, and this will probably a DNF. We'll see how much more I read of it before I have to return my library loan.

Not too long ago, there was some contentious Twitter discourse where editors, agents, and booksellers claimed that Adult fiction has to be above 80k words, or else consumers won’t buy the books.

I would argue (1) what is the data for this, and (2) are you only counting how book fanatics feel? Because I can just about guarantee you that the general public does not believe “longer books = more bang for my buck.” I’m also not sure what the wisdom is of, hypothetically, luring consumers in with longer books, but if consumers don’t finish reading the book or felt like the length of it was unnecessary, they’re not exactly going to be rushing to buy another book from this author.

Okay, I feel bad going on this rant for this specific book. If you loved this book, ignore my review. I’m just speaking as someone who is a generally voracious reader, yet has had a very disappointing reading year thus far filled with many DNFs, and I suppose this is the book that broke the camel’s back for me, so to speak. But I felt like I could at least finish it if it were 50-100 pages shorter (hence my frustration).

First, a positive: I loved the voice in this book. It was easy to read and full of personality.

However, on the topic of voice…I’m not usually someone who is against pop culture references in contemporary romances. But. I’m an American millennial, and 80% of the numerous pop culture references went completely over my head, to the point at which it actually began to interfere with my reading experience.

The bigger problem, though, is that…none of the emotions in this book made any logical sense to me, so I felt completely disconnected from the romance. And the more disconnected I felt, the less I wanted to keep reading.

As many other reviewers have pointed out, this second chance romance suffers greatly because we’re not told exactly why Hudson broke up with Kian in the past. I know traditional publishing is often allergic to flashbacks, but surely just one in-line flashback would have been fine? It certainly would have provided a lot of missing context.

There are two reasons that I felt like so much of this book didn’t make sense. One was that it felt as though the author not only didn’t show the characters’ backstory on the page, but also didn’t think it through, either:

- Why would Hudson dump Kian and then think Kian would be completely fine with pretending to be Hudson’s boyfriend again?
- Kian reacts with such anger toward Hudson in the book, yet Hudson was completely clueless that the breakup hurt Kian. Huh?

- When Hudson and Kian are flying to Georgia, they ask each other some pretty damn basic questions about each other considering they dated for two and a half years—why? (Am I supposed to believe Hudson never asked Kian why he majored in journalism when they were in college?)

The other reason was that some of the conflict felt added to the story just for the sake of drama, not because the conflict actually made sense:

- In exchange for pretending to be his boyfriend, Hudson offers Kian the one thing he desperately wants and needs: An in to Spotlight. So…why would Kian almost immediately grow so angry with Hudson that he calls off the entire fake dating scheme, instead of deciding to put up with it just for one dinner so he can get what he wants?

- Hudson claims that his parents approve of Kian, which is why he needs Kian to pretend they’re still boyfriends. Except when Kian joins the dinner with them, he immediately offends Hudson’s dad. Sure, Hudson’s mom still likes Kian, but…the logic here isn’t logic-ing?

Just to be clear, I can completely buy that Kian is the kind of person who just generally makes bad choices (although, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure whether this was the author’s intent). But even bad choices need some kind of rationale to them.

I'm just...frustrated and tired and sad that a genre (contemporary romance) that I used to enjoy has been so disappointing to me lately.

So...as you may know, I broke my own brand when I ended up writing a contemporary romance novel (Novel #3), which has been on submission to publishers for almost a year now. (Not continuously, but it's been almost a year since it first went on submission.)

I wrote Novel #3 as someone who, at the time, mostly read indie romance. In the indie/self-publishing space, there isn't as much of a feeling that writing contemporary romance alongside other forms of romance (SFF romance or romantic suspense) is brand-breaking. I had always considered myself--or at least, I'd always wanted to be--a SFF writer, but a stint in fanfiction is what drew me to romance, due to the combination of romance plots with suspense/mystery/SFF plots.

When publishing professionals suggested that writing a contemporary romance meant I should be a career contemporary romance writer, my reaction was kind of "oh no." I mean, I do have a document full of other contemporary romance ideas, and I wrote about 5k words' worth of a very commercial rom-com. But I never considered becoming a career romance writer, for a few reasons:

1) Even at the time I drafted Novel #3, I was considering quitting romance writing. Partly because of how hard it is as an author of color to get any recognition in the genre, and partly because the reception to my first novel made me feel that my brand of asexual, demiromantic, Asian, neurodivergent-influenced romance was *not mainstream*.

2) I've tried writing romances about straight characters before. They never work for me. Yet there's considerable backlash against female-presenting authors writing M/M romances in traditional publishing.

3) Even when I come up with commercial ideas, I rarely feel motivated to work on a contemporary romance. Novel #3 is probably an outlier because it encapsulated my personal struggles at the time (themes that I had actually tried to work into SFF novels, but had trouble doing so).

Now, more than ever, I'm definitively considering quitting romance writing.

Part of it is, yes, I've had a bad experience with my novel on submission so far. It's not dead yet, although I battle regularly with pessimism about whether anyone will publish it. But the kinds of responses I got from editors? I'd love to be able to talk openly about them one day, if I can.

But part of it is also that I've continued to have very little luck when reading traditionally published romances, to the point at which I'm starting to actively dislike the genre.

They're either too long and slow, or too sex-focused for my taste, or focused on one of those "commercial hooks" yet unable to explain them in a way that makes logical sense (like the author thought, hey, I need this trope to get a book deal, but there is not enough internal logic in the book to justify the trope, so the whole thing falls flat on its face).

Even for the few traditionally published romances I've given positive reviews to, I find that they leave my memory quite quickly, and even just a year later I have trouble remembering the plot and characters. (Whereas I can still remember the basic plot of indie romances I read 7 years ago.)

It seems that traditional publishing doesn't want "quiet" romances, so many of these romances are filled with conflict. Except sometimes, it doesn't make sense to have constant conflict between the main characters, and the arguing kills my ability to enjoy the book.

Traditional publishing apparently wants romances to be over 80k words (there was a whole argument about this on Twitter a month back regarding the length of Adult fiction). But many of these romances I find to be unbearably slow. In my opinion, long romances should be the exception, not the norm, because it takes a high level of skill on the writer's part to make 100k words' worth of romance interesting. (In my book, only Alexis Hall has managed to pull this off. Notably, he came from the indie romance space.)

I'm tired.

I'm tired of length and "marketability" concerns dictating the content of romance novels so that they make no sense or feel like they're full of useless fluff. (There is such a thing as compelling fluff; I'm talking about unnecessary fluff.) I'm tired of people thinking arguments = sexy plot progression, when the number one concern (FROM A WRITING CRAFT PERSPECTIVE) should be "does this make sense?"

I'm incredibly tired of seeing people on Twitter ask "where are the queer Asian romances?" and wanting to scream that I've been trying to get my queer Asian romance published for three years (!!!), but no one thinks my book will sell.

So, I am working on a book in a different genre now, and though it helps in some respects, it's also hard, because I went from writing stories that I knew how to write (and arguably was good at - though I'm sure my critics would disagree) to a genre that I've had to learn almost from scratch and revise into oblivion, which has done a number on my self confidence.

And it's so frustrating because I still believe the romance genre can be so much more than it is. But it isn't.

And that's why I want to quit it.

I'm convinced that the reason I'm having so many problems with Novel #4 is that I added too many subplots.

I mean, I added subplots in the first place because I needed red herrings, and I also thought it was a good way to extend the word count. But now I find it hard to juggle multiple strands of investigation while keeping the pacing consistent—for example, if the protagonist has a breakthrough for one subplot, it doesn't necessarily make sense for the protagonist to put a pause on that in order to investigate something else.

Sigh.

I've been having intense imposter syndrome about this book and feeling like I might have been too ambitious/overly confident when conceptualizing it.

Myth #1: I've included mystery subplots before, so I don't necessarily have to learn how to plot from scratch!

Reality: I'm starting to realize writing 70-80k words' worth of genre mystery is very different from having a mystery subplot.

And not only is my book genre mystery; it's also a fantasy/mystery hybrid, involving intense worldbuilding and politics and all that fantasy stuff.

Myth #2: I've always been a SFF writer! Returning to fantasy won't be hard for me!

Reality: I somehow failed to realize that both of my previously completed SFF books were actually near-contemporary. One was sci-fi but took place in a time deliberately close to our own; the other was paranormal, so almost contemporary by default.

I haven't actually written a secondary world fantasy (or spent much time trying to write one) in many years. I'd almost forgotten how much history and worldbuilding goes into it, and on top of that, I'd forgotten how much time it takes to figure out how to convey history/worldbuilding without just infodumping on the reader.

(A lot of my recent conversations with my CP have been me explaining the history of the world and them being like "You knew this the whole time? Why didn't you include it in the draft???" and me going "...........I dunno, I couldn't think of a place to put this explanation.")

So...yes, I feel nervous all the time. Nervous that I might have overly hyped myself to my agent. Nervous that I might not be able to pull off this book well enough.

But as my dad reminded me today, I can't give up now. I'm 67k words in and I might as well see this through to the end, even if it ends up taking me more time than I thought it would.

My first beta is about halfway through Novel #4 and has promised to finish on Tuesday. In addition to the subplots that I *know* need to be fleshed out, they've identified some parts that could be rewritten, and I think their suggestions make sense.

Hopefully I can brainstorm with them about the missing parts of the story this week, so I can start tackling the heavy revisions this weekend. I might even take a week off from my day job in March to finish revising so I can get more CP opinions in April.

I originally had a list of other story ideas I wanted to write when I was done with this one, but I'm actually feeling pretty tired/overwhelmed by this book, so I think I'll take a writing break after this. I mean, it will take my agent about a month to read the manuscript anyway, so I know I can have a least a month off.

This isn't the book that's taken me the longest to write, but it's the book that I've rewritten the most. In the past, I've always started with/built the plot around a romantic relationship, and I don't tend to rewrite my romances a lot because once I have an idea for what the relationship is and how it develops, there's...honestly not that much room for rewriting. (I've never completely changed my mind about how a romantic relationship develops before.)

But this book? I think every single scene has been rewritten multiple times.

I've rewitten entire character personalities.

I've rewritten character interactions.

And most of all, I've rewritten the mystery and investigations so many times (and still have more rewrites to go).

So...yeah.

(I am slightly terrified of what I'll have to do if I ever get contracted to write the sequel for this book, but I just have to remind myself that (1) that's not worth worrying about until/unless I get a book deal for this, and (2) *hopefully* the process wouldn't be as hard, now that I know the characters and their backstories.)

I haven't talked much about this openly (or even semi-openly on this blog), although I did mention a few months ago that I was seriously thinking of getting a rights reversion for my first book from my publisher.

So...my experience with my first published novel really sucked.

It was the book of my heart; it was the story about mental illness and trauma that I really needed to write at the time, with all the tropes that I loved. And it bombed hard in pretty much every single way.

How did my publication experience suck, you ask? In these ways:

- My experience with the publisher wasn't great. After a long delay in release, I was asked to do line edits/copy edits in 2 weeks, which completely stressed me out (and a lot of the copy edits were "get rid of prepositions" which was.........weird...........). I wasn't satisfied with the book cover (by which I mean, I really wanted a book cover that accurately reflected the content and mood of the book), either, and found the process of communicating about the book cover combative from my publisher's side.

- I don't think I had ARCs/preorder links until right before release, so I couldn't do any pre-release marketing. I did try to reach out to review blogs to offer review copies, and...no one wanted to review my book.

- My publisher didn't do any marketing. I know authors always complain about this, but my publisher stopped doing blog tours, only tweeted once about my book, and did a "release blitz" thing that only one or two smaller blogs participated in.

- The book released to negative reviews and very low sales. (By "very low," I mean after 3 years, the book sold less than 100 copies.)

So...yeah. It might be obvious why I want the rights back - if the book isn't going to sell well because it's extremely niche or something, I might as well keep all of the profits myself.

I think other people might look at my experiences and conclude that I made a mistake. That I should have shelved the novel when I couldn't land an agent because I've effectively locked myself out of ever traditionally publishing it.

But the thing is...I don't really regret what I went through with this book. Here's why.

1. I can't handle shelving books. I'd rather do anything than shelve something.

Maybe it's the immigrant in me, but the idea that I'd completely wasted an entire year writing and revising that book would have devastated me beyond anything. I would have rather self-published the book than shelve it.

Also, when it came to the people around me who are not well versed in the publishing industry, they were impressed enough by the idea that any publisher picked up my book, even a tiny one, that they took me seriously as an author. (The stigma against self-publishing is real.)

2. In retrospect, I think this book falls into the category of "not suitable for traditional publishing," so even if I shelved it, I doubt I ever would have gotten traditional publishing interest in it in the future.

It's very influenced by fanfic tropes and narrative structures, and the best way to classify it is "SF romance," which is absolutely not a thing in traditional publishing. Although once in a while, a publisher like Tor (or Orbit, to a lesser extent) will publish a romance-heavy SFF book, SFF novels that incorporate romance beats still generally confuse publishers/general audiences, despite being wildly popular in fanfiction. It's also...very heavy on the mental illness and trauma themes.

Unless I ever became so famous that publishers would buy my laundry lists, I can't imagine traditional publishing ever being interested in this book.

3. I learned a lot from going through the publishing experience with a book, and my negative experiences with this book taught me how to deal with failure.

In hindsight, I'm very thankful for this part.

I learned that publishing is, for better or worse, heavily dependent on marketability. The fact that no one wanted to review or buy my book is something I'm pretty sure was caused by a failure of marketing, which I did experience at the querying stage. The hard truth I learned is that if you can't sell your book at the query stage, you are probably going to have issues later on, when you reach end readers.

I completely readjusted my expectations for publishing after going through what I went through with this book. I realized that I can't be in this for the money or accolades; I learned how to cope with reader reviews that call me "the worst writer ever" (yes, I have gotten reviews like this).

I learned that I can survive the book of my heart flopping. I never would have dreamed I could be that resilient, but I am.

And I never would have learned any of this if I'd shelved my first novel. While all the querying and sub rejections I've received since then still hurt, I suspect they would have hurt a lot more if I hadn't already experienced so much rejection and failure to begin with.

(Literally, when I queried for the second time, I sat down and asked myself, "What's the worst that can happen?" And I was overall much more chill about querying that time, because the idea of this book failing didn't scare me anymore.)

I think I'm more resilient as a writer than I was when I wrote this book, as well as more realistic about what it takes to survive the publishing industry and pursuing writing as a career.

And for that, I'm grateful.

Novel #4 is currently 66k words!

I've sent the draft to my beta, who promised to read it and return feedback by the end of the weekend. I know there is more I need to add to my draft (I'm pretty sure I can reach 70k, but I would feel more comfortable sending this to my agent if it's at least 75k words, so hopefully I can reach that), but my brain is pretty dead right now, so I'm going to wait until I can brainstorm with my beta after they've read it.

In the meantime, I'm *trying* to forget everything about this book so I'll be able to edit it with fresh eyes and ideas, hopefully? But I've also forgotten what I even do on the weekends anymore when I'm not working on this book, lol...

If I can get a draft of this book by the end of March that has the plot fully fleshed out and that I'm pretty happy with, I can start sending it to other CPs in April, with the goal of sending the manuscript to my agent hopefully by the end of May.

Fingers crossed!

Novel #4: 65k words

I'm pretty happy about reaching 65k. I have a couple more chapters to rewrite, but I also feel like I'm at the point of wanting to yeet this draft to my first CP because my brain is breaking from thinking about this book for so long.

I think a few of the chapters in the middle need to be re-ordered, which will create space for more scenes to be added...except the problem is that while I have a vague idea of what those scenes should accomplish, I have no idea what should actually *happen* in them. Again, I probably need help from my CP.

*prays my brain won't give out on me before the weekend is over*

Today's topic was inspired by some tweets I saw lately.

So...writing a story about your own personal experiences is a double-edged sword. I say this as someone who *has* written fiction about my personal experiences. On one hand, I think writers are drawn to telling stories about our personal experiences, especially as a way to process negative events. Like a splinter beneath your skin that you're trying to excise.

On the other hand, writing about your personal experiences can make receiving criticism of those experiences excruciatingly difficult to deal with.

Whenever I think I'd like to be transparent about my inspiration for my stories when they're derived from my experiences, I think about Akemi Dawn Bowman (author of Starfish and other books). She once tweeted that when she explained that the protagonist's experience with her abusive mom came from her own experience with her abusive mom, she received comments from readers who said her mom probably has a mental illness and judging her would be ableist, which caused her to have a mental breakdown.

Sometimes, I regret the publication of my first novel in the sense that it was so personal to me - even if the personal aspects of it were metaphorical rather than literal - and I wonder how I ever had the confidence to put this story in front of other people.

My third novel (which has yet to be published) is literally drawn from many of my life experiences, yet I feel uneasy about sharing that publicly because I'm afraid of people trying to poke and prod me as to how much of the story is autobiographical and how much isn't.

Basically, writing a story about your own personal experiences seems like a thorny issue with no best way to resolve it, other than not reading any reviews or answering any questions about the story.

So...last week, there was a lot of talk about authors having to accept that writing/publishing is a business, and if authors can't accept that, they shouldn't seek traditional publishing. The conversation was mostly about having to adhere to certain minimum wordcounts, but—in my mind, at least—the conversation dovetailed a bit with some YouTube videos I was watching from agents talking about authors sticking to certain genres for business-related purposes. In other words, agents don't want to sell a book for you in one genre if you decide to pivot and write in a completely different genre, because that doesn't make business sense.

So...I'm one of those authors who writes in different genres, so obviously, I have a personal stake in this.

But my counterpoint is this: The vast majority of authors cannot make anything close to a living from publishing, even if they publish in the same genre, due to a combination of publishers paying authors little and taxes taking most of an author's income.

When it's very unlikely for you to ever make a significant income from publishing, how does it make sense to approach writing novels from a business standpoint?

The only counterargument I can think of is that authors need to at least try to approach writing novels as a business—i.e. by building your brand through publishing several books—in order to eventually see steady/significant income.

But this is asking authors to do an immense amount of labor for little money for years until their career gets off the ground. (Personal examples: It took me one entire year to write and revise my first novel, which never got an agent or traditional book deal. I drafted my third novel in two months and then spent almost two years revising it in order to get an agent/try to get a traditional book deal. I'm on my fifth month of working on my fourth novel, currently deep in the revision trenches.)

Most people simply can't do this without another job that pays their bills, unless they have a spouse who makes enough money to cover all their expenses plus healthcare. (It's like starting a new business, only worse, because you can't borrow money or get investors to give you money until you turn a profit. Unless you publish a book through Kickstarter or something.)

To be frank, I can't conceive of approaching writing this way.

I write whatever I want because I always make a decision regarding whether each story idea is worth my time. And when I say "worth my time," I mean from an emotional standpoint, because it's not possible to predict how much money a book will ever make: Do I love this story enough to devote hundreds of hours to write this book, regardless of how much money I may or may not make from it?

Quite honestly, if I were ever to reduce my writing career to pure financial considerations, my only conclusion would be that I should quit writing altogether. I am fortunate and privileged to have a day job that pays me quite well—and I honestly don't think I would ever make as much money from writing books as I do from my day job salary.

From that perspective, it doesn't make sense to treat writing novels as anything other than my passion project.

I want a traditional book deal because I want to reach a broad audience with my books; because I hope to be able to touch people with my stories. I would, of course, love to be able to make a livable wage from writing books just so I can be compensated for the time and labor I spend, even doing something I love.

But American capitalism is so broken that I don't expect to ever be able to do so.

So, I can only write the stories that I love. And the stories that I love might not make the most "business sense," but they're the only ones I can justify spending even the minimum amount of time and energy on.

Decided to catch up on some book reviews for books I DNF'ed last year...

Wings of Ebony by J. Elle

Genre: YA, fantasy

I feel bad for DNF'ing this. I think part of it was that I was blown away by Tracy Deonn's Legendborn, and while of course books by BIPOC (especially Black) authors shouldn't be in competition with each other, I just found myself not really enjoying Wings of Ebony as a fantasy book.

I did enjoy the twist about Ghizon that happened 60% or so through the book, but the whole conceit of an island with magical people didn't really grab me.

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Genre: YA, mystery/thriller

Content warnings: Sexual assault of a Native woman, violence, drug use

DNF'ed because of the sexual assault. I get that sexual assault of Native women is a huge problem and the author wanted to bring attention to it, but I'm someone who can't really take sexual assault of main characters in books I want to enjoy.

I also felt weird about the romance (even though the characters don't get together in the end). I forget how old Jamie was, but I was a little weirded out that he was a twenty-something guy pretending to be a high school student.

(But I heard about the author's pitch for her next book and it sounds dope!!)

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Genre: Adult, thriller, historical, paranormal

Content warnings: Racism, gaslighting, graphic descriptions of violence

DNF'ed when I got to the part where the female main characters' husbands were all gaslighting them about James (or whatever the vampire's name was) being a danger to their neighborhood. I can't take gaslighting as a plot device in books.

I didn't really enjoy a lot of this, though. The description of death due to a rat invasion was (a) gross, and (b) bizarre in the sense that no one seemed to think it was a strange enough event to warrant investigation. Rats don't generally kill people, y'all...

Also, I'm generally uncomfortable with male authors trying to write feminist books. [I acknowledge the argument that some such authors may be gender-questioning or closeted trans women, but don't want to get into that right now.] Like some of the lines in this book where the female characters talk about being a stay-at-home mom/wife as a noble job felt weird to me, knowing the author is a man. *Shrug*

Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar

Genre: YA, contemporary romance

I really loved the way this showed how Hani and Ishu navigated their identities as Bengali diaspora. There's nothing bad that made me DNF; I just often have a hard time connecting to YA contemporary romance and grew a little bored around the halfway mark.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Genre: Adult, historical fantasy

Maybe I'll return to this book eventually...? I just got turned off after I read a part that made it seem like the main character lost a hand, but I can't find that content warning in anyone's reviews, so maybe I misunderstood.

Hard Sell by Hudson Lin

Genre: Adult, contemporary romance

I really wanted to love this book. I mean, how many Asian authors are out there writing queer romance? Except (1) the beginning was quite slow, and (2) there were some gross jokes that really turned me off the story.

*Deep, heavy sigh*

I previously went on a bit of a rant about how to take critique on your manuscript, based on a prior experience I had with a critique group, but I wanted to go into a bit more detail on that experience and what I might do in a future critique group.

To sum up what happened again: We ended up reading a member's 100k+ word fantasy novel, which I had serious problems with, and the more time I had to spend reading it, the more impatient and blunt I became with my critique, because the novel was seriously flawed on every possible level and I was sick of reading it. Which obviously led to some...Bad Feelings in the group.

I was too polite to voice the fundamental problem I had with the novel, which was:

I didn't know what the author's intention for it was.

And because I didn't know what the purpose/intention for the novel was, it was impossible to explain why it was failing on a structural level (at least, not without sounding really mean).

Here's the thing: In a commercial genre, you always know—very clearly—what the author's intention for the book is. (I mean, unless the author completely failed to write a competent book.) A murder mystery requires a twisty, not-too-predictable, fast-paced murder investigation. A romance requires emotions and feelings and an investment in seeing the two main characters get together, romantically.

The thing with SFF is that those genres describe a setting, but not a plot. A fantasy novel can have any kind of plot—a mystery plot, a political intrigue plot, a military epic, etc.

But the author needs to decide on what kind of plot their SFF book is going to have, and communicate that to the reader.

The author in my critique group, quite honestly, didn't seem to know what their plot was, other than the fact that they wanted not to follow any kind of trope. So the character who was being built up as a the Big Bad got killed off only a few chapters in, and a different character was supposed to be the antagonist.

The thing is, tropes exist for a reason. Reader expectations are an important thing to keep in mind, not just something you can completely subvert because you think it will be a brilliant reversal. When a reader's genre expectations are broken, oftentimes, readers react with unhappiness instead of awe at the author's brilliance. No romance reader wants to read a romance where one of the main characters dies at the end, and no mystery reader wants to read a mystery where the murderer's identity remains unknown at the end.

(One example of successful trope subversion is Knives Out. I can't go into detail because that would entail spoiling the entire murder mystery, but something to take note of is that Knives Out subverts some expectations, but ultimately still fulfills the basic expectations of a murder mystery—i.e. it still reveals the murderer's identity to the audience. And while the subversion purposefully misleads the audience, the audience still always has an idea of where the story is going.)

If a reader doesn't know where a story is going, they're likely to put it down, not keep reading because they want to know what the plot actually is.

I think this is the fundamental misunderstanding of what makes a page-turner. Books capture readers' attention not because readers have no idea what is going to happen, but because readers have an expectation of what will happen, except only in broad strokes, and they're eager to see how the author fills in those details.

Anyway...I was too polite to voice any of these fundamental concerns I had with this book. If I were more honest, I would have told the author outright, "I don't know what your intention is for this story and what you're trying to accomplish with it. Therefore, it's impossible to suggest how to make the story better when I don't know what you're fundamentally even trying to do. And if you don't know what you're trying to do with this book either, you might want to spend some time deciding why you wrote/are writing this and what your authorial vision for it is."

Novel #4: 61k words

I technically have a fight scene left to write (fight scenes are my kryptonite), but I'm declaring myself Done with Draft 1 of this manuscript.

WHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Anyway...I already have a list of revisions to make. I don't think the mystery makes sense yet (RIP), and I'm going to need many more descriptions and character reactions. On the bright side, with the number of things that still need to be fleshed out, I should be able to comfortably increase the wordcount to 70k (or more), which is a more comfortable wordcount for a fantasy mystery.

Basically, the book is still in rough shape (the joys of writing a speculative crime novel, lol). But hopefully, I'll be able to focus on making the mystery make sense now, instead of constantly being distracted by the fact that the first draft isn't done yet.

(Also, I am horribly behind on some IRL chores and need to do them, instead of using finishing my draft as an excuse to put them off...)

So...I've recently discovered the PubTips subreddit and got sucked into reading other people's queries.

It's actually pretty fascinating. I almost feel like I'm getting a peek into an agent's life, haha.

I thought I'd write a few things I noticed after reading the queries in that subreddit:

- There is a surprisingly high number of people who just...do not know how to write a query.

This surprised me, since I don't consider myself a query expert; my query letter for my first novel failed spectacularly, and while my second querying experience was much more successful, I didn't really consciously study how to write a query letter and always attributed that success to just a more marketable premise.

But I've always modeled my query letters after the three-paragraph bookflap/back-of-book summary that you always read when you pick up a book, and that was apparently sound advice. There are so many queries that are vague on what the actual plot is (um) or spend way too much time establishing worldbuilding and not enough time getting the reader to care about the protagonist(s).

- For better or worse, having a strong elevator pitch matters.

Marketability...whooo boy, I have so many thoughts on that subject and the problems it causes, especially for marginalized authors. (Maybe that'll be the subject of a future post.)

But I definitely noticed that after reading so many queries, my eyes started glazing over for the ones that didn't have a strong elevator pitch. Like, okay, yet another epic fantasy about a group of rebels overthrowing the government...so what distinguishes this book from all the other epic fantasies about overthrowing the government that have already been published?

(It also feels like sometimes SFF authors confuse "worldbuilding gimmick" for "elevator pitch.")

Which leads me to my next point...

- It kind of shows when authors aren't reading recent books written in their genre.

For fantasy novels, I sometimes get the sense that the author is a fan of Lord of the Rings, or The Wheel of Time, or Brandon Sanderson, but hasn't read any fantasy published in the last five years, and therefore the kind of epic fantasy they're trying to query feels rather dated.

And this does feel most relevant to fantasy; sci-fi and romance rest more on whether you can execute on a fresh concept instead of being tied to particular narrative conventions, and YA/MG authors seem fairly aware of recent books because MG as a genre is still relatively new, while YA is heavily tied to trends.

Novel #4: 58k / 60k words

I'm fairly confident I can finish the first draft next weekend. It's down to maybe two scenes + climax action scene + ending left to write, then trying to smooth everything out for consistency and logic.

I've already slowly begun soliciting feedback from my first beta reader, so yay for efficiency. Once I'm confident that my first draft makes logical sense (no dropped plot threads or clues that weren't resolved, the solving of the mystery makes sense, no feedback from my first beta regarding major changes that should be made), I'll start disseminating more widely among more betas, and collect between 2-5 more opinions before turning in the draft to my agent.

I'm...cautiously excited? The weirdest part of this stage of the pandemic for me is that I can still write, but I have zero sense anymore of whether my writing is any good. Although, it's possible I feel that way because this book is less *a glass cage of emotions* than my previous books, and more *cold hard mystery investigation* plus *vibes*. I usually think my novel drafts are successful if I feel emotional about it, and I'm just...less emotional overall about this book, which is more about the "cool factor" than "characters I want to hug."

It's a transition/evolution, I guess?

Yikes...after a relatively strong start to my reading journey in 2022 with Network Effect by Martha Wells, I've had a disappointing streak lately with respect to the books I've read. Sigh.

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins

Genre: Adult thriller

This is an Adult thriller retelling of Jane Eyre. At first, I super dug this—the idea that Jane was kind of a conwoman grifting her way into Eddie Rochester's money was a great spin.

After the first part in this book, though, I felt like the pacing slowed down a lot, for two reasons:

1. The whole subplot of Jane trying to ingratiate herself among the rich housewives of Thornfield Estates just felt incredibly unrealistic to me. I kept wondering why all the housewives accepted her, at least a little, instead of assuming she was a conniving gold-digger. That really killed my interest in Part 3 of the book.

2. There was no real slow build of tension regarding Eddie's wife (not a spoiler if you're familiar with Jane Eyre) because the book reveals that Eddie's wife is in the attic early on, and I thought this was a major misstep. Even if you know how Jane Eyre goes, I felt like the book could have at least tried for that gothic, "is something creepy happening in this huge mansion" vibe.

In the end, my biggest problem with this book is...well, I guess this is a spoiler, but I wanted to say this to adjust people's expectations: This is definitely not a retelling of Jane Eyre with respect to the gothic romance. Which disappointed me because I eventually shipped Jane and Eddie in the end. Sigh.

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Genre: YA, thriller (?)

I'm glad I picked up this book before I saw that it was described as Cinderella meets Knives Out, because that Knives Out comparison would have severely disappointed me.

I wanted a fun, escapist read full of puzzle-solving, something akin to The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi. Instead, this book is 25% puzzle-solving, and 75% high school life (including shenanigans from a Mean Girl character) + love triangle angst + Hunger Games-style makeover/media training for the rich heiress + a murder mystery that was honestly pretty boring and seemed to exist mostly to add tension to the love triangle.

So, in the end, I found this book incredibly slow. Possibly, if I read the book instead of listening to it on audio, it might have felt faster, since I'm a very fast reader, but I was tempted to DNF this book multiple times out of boredom.

Also, I know I already mentioned that the murder mystery subplot was boring, but I just wanted to say it again: That subplot was boring and it sucked. It was like the author decided that she needed an extra thread of tension and angst for the romantic subplots, so she dropped a dead girl in the story out of nowhere to make the Hawthorne brothers feel guilty and come off as shady—since it's not really a murder mystery the protagonist investigates; the murder is straightforward, it's just that the brothers never clearly state what happened and Avery never asks.

This book felt wildly unrealistic in several areas, which made me very much cringe. Avery's lawyer not telling her about all the implications of the will was straight-up legal malpractice. Avery's bodyguard seemed incredibly incompetent, especially when he put her life in danger to use her as bait to lure out her attacker. Like...come on. No actual bodyguard would do this.

The big twist of the book was pretty meh. Yes, it's a subversion of what the general reader was expect, but the subversion ended up being pretty boring in and of itself.

Two out of five star read for me, would not recommend (although maybe teenagers who haven't read as many books as I have might enjoy this more). The Gilded Wolves has better pacing and more puzzles, and this book doesn't even come close to touching the murder mystery genius of Knives Out.

The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart

Genre: Adult/crossover, epic fantasy

This is looking like a DNF ~42%.

Epic fantasy and I don't really get along. I dislike the style of fantasy that has five (or more) POVs, and I'm a reader who needs either fast pacing or compelling tension (e.g. I'm happy to read suspense and slow-burn romance books).

I enjoyed the first book in the Drowning Empire trilogy, The Bone Shard Daughter, so I thought I'd enjoy the second book, but...not really.

I get that this trilogy is considered YA/Adult crossover, but I found the political intrigue part of TBSE kind of...juvenile? Basically, every time Lin visits a major island, the governor says "I don't need you" and Lin is stuck trying to figure out how to earn the governor's respect. The fact that Phalue and Ranami tell Lin to her face that the only thing they want from her is for her to abdicate made my jaw drop, and not in a good way.

I like well-done political intrigue. TBSE is not it.

I think the reason why the first book worked better for me is that there were underlying mystery threads that provided tension even when plot events were moving slowly. Those mystery threads are, for the most part, gone; I mean, Lin and Jovis are trying to figure out more about the Alanga and why some islands are sinking, but that's about it.

Sigh. Maybe I'll come back to this book at a later point, or maybe not.

A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske

Genre: Adult, historical fantasy/romance/mystery

DNF ~10%. This was a hot mess.

I wasn't interested in picking this one up until I heard that the sequel was being comped to Knives Out, and even though I think the books are meant to mostly stand alone, I became curious.

I seriously don't understand why this book has so many rave reviews. Again, IT'S A HOT MESS.

There's a trend I've noticed with Tor's fantasy books with murder mystery plots, at least among this book, Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey, and A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark: They all begin with a scene from the murder victim's POV right before they die (or, in the case of Magic For Liars, a scene of some rando discovering the dead body soon after the murder).

I think this is a narrative device that should be used carefully, not just as a cheap hook for the reader's excitement. If you can't get the reader excited in your murder mystery by introducing your main character, then...I don't know what to say.

The first chapter of this book (which was a prologue, and I don't know why they didn't just call it a prologue) was a horrible introduction to the story. It immediately removes any possibility of slow-burn suspense; the reader instantly knows Reggie Gatling has been murdered, and so Robin and Edwin wondering what happened to him loses any impact. Plus, it was just a boring creative choice to open the story with a complete rando (to the reader) being tortured for information right before he's killed.

The fantasy aspect? Was confusing as hell. I don't understand why the author set up this society so that there are *public government offices* that deal with magic, yet most people are still unaware of magic. What? And because of this oxymoronic premise, the reader is given no context to understand that Edwin doesn't have enough magic and is discriminated against because of it. You're just told that's the case, and you have to believe it, I guess.

The romance sucked. The "meet cute" between Robin and Edwin had no spark whatsoever—not of attraction, not of fascination, and not even of enemies-to-lovers initial hostility, beyond just a vague irritation on Edwin's part (for no real reason—the book does not clearly explain what Edwin's relationship was with Reggie, so his annoyance with Robin literally makes no sense). The opening chapters did nothing to establish either Robin or Edwin's characters; they both had the personality of a wet towel, except Edwin likes reading books, I guess. By the time Robin was the subject of an attempted kidnapping in Chapter 4, I was so bored that I DNF'ed the book. I don't even know who Robin is at all, and you expect me to care that he's being kidnapped???

Like. I am just baffled that this was (a) published, and (b) acclaimed. I don't know if people are so starved for traditionally published gay romances that they'll read anything, or what.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Genre: Adult, sci-fi

DNF. This novella has such rave reviews, but I was completely turned off by the jarring difference between the very literary narrative prose and then the extremely snarky, slang-heavy letters. Which also felt very flirty from the get-go, which is generally not what I want from an enemies-to-lovers romance.

Novel #4: 54 ~ 55k / 60k

I'm gunning for finishing the first draft because I feel like I'm trapped in this weird psychological loop in which I can't start revising until I finish the first draft, and I really want to revise. I already have a to-do list of revisions to make.

And I think I am on track to finish this first draft by the end of January. (I think. Though next weekend is going to be taken up by DVCon, so I don't expect to get much writing done then.)

But weirdly, it feels like the closer I get to finishing the first draft, the harder it is for me to finish it.

Sigh.

Maybe this is the downside of drafting out of order—I get stuck on the parts that I want to write the least at the very end.

Oh well. Nothing to do but keep trucking and trying to push through.

*Edit: I think I'm stuck because other than the last two chapters, I have two scenes to write, but I feel like they need to be more properly threaded through the story instead of having a bunch of stuff happening all in the same chapter and that might be why I'm having trouble. So...it's possible that I'll just write the ending first and save those two scenes for when I'm doing my revisions. We'll see.

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Page generated Jun. 10th, 2025 02:33 pm

On my world, it means hope.

(The fundamental belief in the potential of every person to be a force for good)

Recent Entries

Writing status/rambles: ??? edition

Writing strengths, weaknesses, processes, and rambles

Writing rambles: I'm a branding nightmare

On burnout & exhaustion (& capitalism)

Book reviews: 2022 Disappointing/DNF Edition

I'm considering quitting romance

Writing status: Too many subplots, too much ambition

Writing status/update/rambles

Why my first publishing experience sucked, and why I'm okay with that

Writing status 2/23

Wordcount 2/19

Writing a story about your personal experiences

Writing as a business

Book reviews: 2021 DNF edition

On revisions

Wordcount: FIRST DRAFT DONE!!! edition

Thoughts on querying

Wordcount 1/31

Book reviews: Disappointing edition

Wordcount 1/16