My regular spoiler-free update on my novel writing progress, including insight into living and working as an indie author with a full-time job and Crohn’s disease.
my_writing_week
Previously on WWW…
Let’s state my targets for the week ahead, if only so I can write how I’ve missed them next week…
I intend to publish the Alchemised blogpost midweek; continue revising The Spike Volume 2; and when my brain’s too mushy for words, work on either a new social media profile image or the Volume 1 2nd ed cover.
In true LRF fashion, I didn’t meet my expectations for this week… by meeting my targets for this week.
Tempting as it may be to expect failure every week and hope that fools fate into not messing with me, the expectation that my expectation would fail would fail instead, and I’d be back where I started.
That made sense in my head; I hope it makes sense to you.
Anyway… Beginning the week on Sunday, I spent half the day at my parents’, which was good.
In the evening, I got into the weeds of rewriting chapter 0.2.1.27 of The Spike Volume 2. I’d written the original draft without a real location in mind, and have since decided I want to use them where they exist, so I needed to find a string of five specific places on one relatively short walk, near another location I’d already picked, in London. Not an easy task.
I’m not giving actual house numbers for fear of causing problems for the people who live there, but I do research real buildings.
I found the starting point; the rest of the journey I finished mapping out on Monday.
Also on Monday, and on Tuesday, I finished writing my review and blogpost about Alchemised by SenLinYu, which went live on Wednesday. It’s not my favourite book I’ve read in 2025, but I suspect it will be the most memorable.
Besides that blogpost, Tuesday and Wednesday was dedicated to rewriting chapter 0.2.1.27. I changed the description of the starting location, and rewrote the route and the stops along the way, whilst adding names and descriptions of the real places. Thank you Bing Maps and Google Street View.
I added some extra character and plot points too. The whole thing was quite a lot of work, but the resultant chapter is a lot stronger for it.
On Thursday, I remembered I was going to add a completely new chapter at around this point in the story. After a bit of investigation, I decided it needed to go before the chapter I’d just revised, so I started “new 0.2.1.27”.
I planned out the basic plot points on Thursday.
On Friday, I tweaked them a little, added a couple of extra flourishes, then began drafting.
Over Friday night, I realised the location layout I’d drafted that day wouldn’t work with the plot, so I corrected that on Saturday and continued writing. There’s still more to do; this is going to be a fun chapter that ups the stakes for one of our main characters nicely.
Also on Saturday, I spent a couple of hours on another variation of the idea I had for a social media profile image, which, like the last one, I aborted. I haven’t fully committed to abandoning it completely yet, but I’ve got a different concept in mind that I need to think about some more before I work on it.
It would be nice to launch it for the start of 2026, but I’m not going to pressure myself unnecessarily by making that a firm deadline.
And finally on Saturday, I wrote this WWW.
By the end of Wednesday, my creativity vs consumption percentage was at 52%, which I was happy with. But my day job was pretty stressful on Thursday and Friday with preparations for the Christmas break, so I allowed myself some grace and relaxation time those two evenings.
My final figure for this week is 47%, up on the 43% of last week and my highest for five weeks. I’ll take that.
To relieve some stress Thursday evening, I partook in some retail therapy in Steam’s winter sale. When I buy games, it’s usually a little splurge in their seasonal sales; as usual, I bought more than I’ll probably play before the next one – my to be played list is already too long – but the games I got are different from what I own. I’m looking forward to playing all of them at some point:
- Inscryption
- King Arthur: Knight’s Tale
- Dispatch
- Lies of P
- Metaphor: ReFantazio
- Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II
- BLACKTAIL
The week ahead will of course be disrupted by the holidays. The day job will be busy on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; Christmas Day will be spent with family; Boxing Day and Saturday I’ll have free to relax and write.
Like those mad joggers I always see running no matter the weather on Christmas morning, I’ll make some time every day to continue my writing. Today is my 561st consecutive day, and if that’s ever to end, there’ll need to be a damn good reason.
My main task for the next seven days is to continue revising The Spike Volume 2, but there are some other bits to do over the next couple of weeks as well: a new social media profile image; a slight website tweak; my final reading_report of 2025; and a new blogpost to write.
Whether you love Christmas, hate Christmas (like me), or don’t celebrate it at all, I hope you enjoy your holidays. I’ll be back next week for the last WWW of 2025.
Reading this week: Slow Horses (Slough House #1) by Mick Herron
Watching this week: The Wire season 4
Playing this week: Red Dead Redemption 2
status_report
In addition to the three short stories available to read for free here, there are three more yet to be published that make up The Spike Volume 0. The new three are in the final stages, and will be available some time before Volume 2 is published.
Work continues on a new cover design for a second edition of The Spike Volume 1.
I’m also working on covers for the two individual parts, 1.1_Application Infiltration and 1.2_Laying Down The Law, which are going to be published separately for the first time. I want both to have a similar style and layout, and I have an idea I like for each. The drafts I’ve created feel a little too minimalist, so I’m investigating what I can add that will make it more visually interesting without distracting from the main image.
Draft 3 is under way for The Spike Volume 2! I’d tentatively like to finish revisions by the end of February 2026.
Volume 2 is my biggest, most complex project to date, containing three separate books from the perspectives of seven characters.
The aim is to publish Volume 2 in 2026.
Early brainstorming has been done for The Spike Volume 3. I know how it must begin; I have an ending that I think will be great; and I have a long list of ideas to get from one to the other that needs to be whittled down and put in an order. I’m not intending to do much more work on this until revision is complete on Volume 2.
There are a couple of other projects in the works that I’m not ready to share yet – they’ll be announced here first.
connecting_links
The Spike is set in our world, incorporating real events; the links below are relevant to the themes and overarching storyline, and may or may not provide clues to the direction of the series.
I do not necessarily agree with or endorse any of the views within.
UK Lawmakers Propose Mandatory On-Device Surveillance and VPN Age Verification
AI’s errors may be impossible to eliminate – what that means for its use in health care
MI6 chief: We’ll be as fluent in Python as we are in Russian
AI-authored code contains worse bugs than software crafted by humans
weekly_inspiration
Every week I share something that’s inspired my creativity.
This week, my tired brain needed a kickstart to begin writing, and one of the ways I do that is by watching YouTube videos for inspiration. There are AuthorTubers I follow, but I also like watching some reaction channels – for me, they need to add something to the experience, perhaps a new perspective from their expertise in a relevant field.
One of the channels I enjoy is James VS Cinema, and particularly his episodes watching Mr Robot. This is a double-whammy: Mr Robot is a big influence on my writing (I’m listening to the soundtrack as I’m typing this), and James’ insight and enthusiasm is great; plus there’s the added bonus it’s edited down to a quicker 20-25 minutes.
Season 4 Episode 5: Method Not Allowed is one of the smartest episodes of any show I’ve ever seen. It begins with Darlene telling Elliot, “It’s cool, dude, we don’t have to talk”, and there’s no dialogue for the rest of the episode until the last seconds, where Vera says to Krista, “It’s time we talked.”
It’s so action-packed, and so well done, that I didn’t even notice there was no dialogue until I read a review afterward – and James doesn’t seem to notice either!
I don’t think this would have the same impact in a book, but I might have a go at something similar one day…
What’s inspired you this week? Please share in the comments.
See you next week.
Arrowmaker Books 