… or why a write-a-book-in-a-month challenge isn’t necessarily a good challenge.
Welp, it’s been a while, I know. I wish I could say I’ve been furiously writing, but alas, I have not. In all honesty, the pandemic threw a wrench into my writing. I’ve been trying to re-establish my writing habit, but it’s been hard.
That being said, I am happy to report that I am close to publishing my 5th novel! If you’re waiting for the final book in The Rose Cross Academy series, well, sorry, you’ll have to wait a few months longer! My pandemic project, however, is in the final steps of self-publishing. After which I will be working to complete the final novel in the RCA series.
My newest novel, The Gamemasters, is a LitRPG / GameLit sci-fi novel. The high-level premise is gamers beta testing a cutting-edge virtual reality game become stuck in the game. As the game’s storyline kicks off, the game itself starts killing players. As players try to stay alive, they turn on each other. I see this as Lord of the Flies in a virtual reality setting.
The cover I have concocted is a paint-over of an AI-generated artwork. The cover depicts one of the dungeon bosses the players must defeat in the game. I mean, who doesn’t get the heebie-jeebies at seeing a two-story hairy spider?
I started this novel for a certain month-long writing challenge in 2020 (I’m leaving it unnamed since there is some controversy surrounding the entity at the moment) during the pandemic. I managed to get through the month and came out with a 60,000K novel, but after the stress of writing thousands of words every night for a month, I needed a break. Even after the writing break, I found it hard to get back into writing. Just thinking about writing, and sometimes even opening a document sparked a wave of panic.
I had to take a long break. A really long break. What I think happened was that I turned writing—which until November 2020 was a fun escape—into a high-stress project that I had to do no matter what.
I started to hate writing. Near the end of November 2020, I was already dreading opening a document and writing again. This hobby was no longer fun. Now it was a chore, right up there with cleaning the bathroom. I wrote because I had to, not because I wanted to.
During my ‘break’, I shifted my focus away from writing. I got back into table-top card games. In the 90’s, I used to play Magic: The Gathering with my high school friends. That’s probably hinting at my age right there! I had found my old (and I do mean old) deck from the 90’s and decided to get back into collecting the cards. Now, 10,000+ cards later, I was finally able to open my works in progress and work on them without getting panic attacks.
For 2022 to now, I worked on both the final book in The Rose Cross Academy series, as well as polishing up The Gamemasters. At the beginning of June 2024, I had finished two rounds of self-editing of the manuscript, as well as an AI check of the document. I wavered a few times on whether to split this novel into two parts (it comes in at a juicy 158,000 words), but in the end, I thought “Ah, screw it! I’m self-publishing. This novel can be as long as I want it to be!”)
I did briefly think about submitting the novel to a few agents, but there are very few sci-fi agents accepting queries, and even fewer who will take a sci-fi that is not spaceships and alien planets.
Today, I uploaded the cover and contents to KDP, and have requested a proof copy. Likely, I’ll get the proof within a few days. I was planning on taking the novel on vacation with me and doing an edit while on the plane, but we’ll see where the world takes me. I still have the copyright to finish before publishing, so I still have some busy work to do.
Oh! And I need to update the website. Geesh. I haven’t done that in ages. I hope I still remember my HTML!
As a side note, I have been dabbing in an epic fantasy, the title still unknown (although I have a couple of thoughts). I like the idea M. Night Shyamalan presented in The Village and I am trying to work in a twist like that into this novel, but also keep the setting high fantasy with mythical creatures and magic.
Now as the weather warms and the summer flowers come out I hope to get back into a habit of writing. It doesn’t have to be daily. I think that’s what got me into trouble in the first place. If I can do something creative every day, not just with writing, I think I can get myself back into a good groove.
Don’t forget to get outside and enjoy the world. And drink lots of water!
Until next time.
-Rissa
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