A Quartz Storm 2: Storm Harder
And other updates
It’s been a while, Substack people! I’ve missed sending these occasional messages to you all but the truth of it is life got too busy. The good and the bad all piled on, and I’m behind with pretty much everything you can imagine.
I’ve been upskilling in multiple ways - I love my writing but it just isn’t going to be making me money in the short term. Although I have just agreed my first contract to help someone else with the self-publishing process. It’ll be a great experience for us both, and I’m excited that this is a route for me to use my skillset to help another author with the things they don’t want to handle at a price they can afford. But most of my (work) time has been spent training. I’m now proficient in Articulate, and rapidly getting to grips with Photoshop. It’ll hopefully allow my skills from all those years in academia to be put to productive use in Instructional Design.
But you’re all here to find out about my writing (and the random tangents I find along the way!). Unfortunately, one of my dearest friends has had the worst news, and so even when I’ve had the time in theory to write, my heart and head have rarely aligned to allow me to get the words on the page. I’m proud to call him part of my found family. We’ve picked each other up - literally and metaphorically - for years and I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do without him in my life. Despite this, I have managed to sketch out the sequel to A Quartz Storm. I know the shape of it, and where Safiya is going on her journey this time. She, too, is dealing with the shape of grief as she continues on her adventures, so I suspect I’ll be shedding more than one tear as I get these chapters on the page. In a nod to one of the best Christmas movies of all time, I’m using the working title A Quartz Storm 2: Storm Harder, although that will certainly change as the story emerges.
My intention now is to wait until the second book is written and to then self-publish. I’m not entirely giving up on the querying journey, but I decided early on to only query with people I would love to work with: and this makes shortlisting time consuming! You may well see me jump into some pitch events in the coming months as I slowly return to a bit of a social media presence, but I’m now viewing traditional publishing as a bonus, not necessarily the goal.
My bookshelf is also evolving wildly over time. Where once there were piles of fantasy fiction battling with academic tomes, my shelves are spilling over with an esoteric mix of folklore, writing guides, and whatever may catch my eye that week. And with my birthday looming I might just manage to increase my reading pile even further!
As the nights draw in, hold your loved ones close, and find every excuse to celebrate the light in the dark.
Until next time, safe travels.