I didn’t intend to take a six month break from the blog, but here we are.

In a nutshell, after writing my series “Confessions of a Christian Writer,” I felt led to take a hiatus from writing (including for the blog) for some time to pray and continue to reflect. I picked up novel-writing again some time ago, but returning to the blog was something I had to weigh for a bit longer. In addition, I was busy wrapping up my master’s program in literature, moving, and beginning an English literature Ph.D. program. I’ll be honest, the break from regular blogging was nice. Sometimes separation teaches us how much we truly enjoy something and helps us reorient to our purpose, and that’s exactly what my unintentional break from blogging did for me.

Now, for some writing updates:

The Blog

Despite my enjoyment of the break, I do like writing for my blog. However, I felt that I was in a place where I prioritized just producing content for content’s sake, rather than actually contributing something meaningful to myself or others. In a world saturated by everyone’s opinions on anything and everything, I wonder if my time would be better spent focusing solely on writing my books than posting here, even though writing for the blog is only a couple of hours a week, if that. Wrestling over those thoughts contributed to a prolonged, unplanned break.

That being said, I do have a few topics and things I want to write on, so abandoning the blog doesn’t feel right. As of the time of writing this, I have a tentative plan of topics planned out for the rest of the year on my usual biweekly schedule, though posting may end up being more sporadic. I am pretty passionate about the handful of post ideas I have, though, so I imagine I’ll be a little regular for the remainder of 2024. Overall, my goal is to shift my priorities here: writing with more intentionality, even if that means sacrificing the scheduled plan at times, or scrapping a post that’s just not working.

The Myth-Keepers

My big fiction project right now is writing the first book of The Myth-Keepers, which I hope to have a full draft of by the end of the year. I used my bit of break between master’s and Ph.D. transition to buckle down into the development of this re-imagining of my longest active series, completing a full outline for the six planned books, refreshing world-building notes and character profiles, and beginning to actually write the first book. It’s been fun and helped me fall back in love with writing. The re-envisioning of this series brings The Myth-Keepers back to its original roots, fusing the spy novel genre of the original series that contributed many characters and plotlines, with the fantasy genre of The Myth-Keepers that came to be circa 2013. I’m very excited about this series, and hope to share more soon. I haven’t updated my work-in-progress pages, but I have it on my to-do list to update The Myth-Keepers WIP page before the end of the year.

Whitman Court

My other big series, Whitman Court,is at a bit of a standstill, as I’m unsure how to move forward with the series at the moment. I may end up launching into some more major revisions on the POV, changing from the current version, which is Melody’s first-person perspective, and reverting back to the original third-person with a semi-omniscient narrator. I’ve gotten conflicting feedback on the POV for the series, hearing positive feedback about Melody’s narration on one side, but critical feedback from others. It’s hard to know what to do to resolve the issue because of the stark divide in opinion, though I also do feel like I can continue growing in writing Melody’s voice better and stronger. My current thought on the matter: it may be the best thing is to revise the book to include multiple first-person perspectives (i.e. Book One contains chapters from both Melody and a couple from Mason, her brother). We’ll see.

I’m on such a roll with The Myth-Keepers right now that I’m not overly concerned with Whitman Court progress. I will likely wait until I’m done with the rough draft of The Myth-Keepers Book 1, then mess with revisions, likely over Winter Break.

What I’ve Been Reading/Watching/Playing

In terms of story intake and inspiration, I spent part of this summer rereading The Lord of the Rings, which was wonderful. I also read through the entire Bible within a month, something I’ve never done but highly recommend. Reading the entirety of Scripture in a condensed period of time really helps you see the whole Bible as one cohesive, beautiful story.

The most enjoyable movie I saw was definitely Twisters. As someone who considers Oklahoma home, it felt like a love letter to my state, and I absolutely loved it. Inside Out 2 was also pretty good, albeit a little too relatable, ha.

I also finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom shortly before its first year anniversary, and have completed most everything in the game (except collect all the Koroks). After that, I replayed through the first Xenoblade Chronicles game, actually taking the time to complete the side quests as they became available.

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There you have it—all my writing updates from my long break. I’ll admit, it feels good and natural to write this. I’ve missed blogging.