Short notes on what I am actually working on — chapters in progress, problems I am stuck on, and the occasional thing that finally worked.
My MFA program challenged me to create a fictitious newsletter for a book launch, so naturally I ended up creating the real thing instead. The first edition of Third Row is now live.
Separately, I finalized a scene from The Memory-Cursed Princess for an assignment in another class. It is the action sequence leading into the novel’s inciting incident, and I am really happy with how it turned out.
The tricky part was balancing urgency with character. Seren has to leave her younger brother, Jory, trapped in a mudpit while she rides back to Founder’s Keep for help. The situation needs to feel genuinely dangerous, but I also wanted to preserve the emotional exchange between them as Jory begs her not to leave and Seren tries to convince both him — and herself — that going for help is the right choice.
Those are often the scenes I enjoy working through most: when the action itself is relatively straightforward, but the emotional timing has to be exactly right.
Worked on Chapter 32 of Deceivers of Adolair — the final scene in the Maze of Final Reckoning. This has been one of the hardest chapters to write, but I am happy with how it is turning out. The challenge is not only the complexity of the Maze itself, but coordinating the action between the four remaining players on Team Silverwings in a way that satisfies each character arc and still pushes the story toward the final climax.
Used Claude Code to revamp this website over two days. I changed almost everything. The idea of doorways to other worlds came out of that work, and I want to carry it further into the worlds I am building in the writing itself.