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…
Over the next seven days, my top priority remains revising The Spike Volume 2…
…There should be a review of The Blacktongue Thief sometime in the next week.
If I can’t decide how to proceed with my creativity vs consumption blogpost, I may begin another as I’ve got three or four subjects I’m looking forward to writing about.
And I need to progress the cover for The Spike Volume 1 second edition, which I haven’t touched this past week.The new furniture has arrived! I intend to build it and rearrange my lounge tomorrow, Sunday. I’m sure it’ll take longer than I expect, but I hope it doesn’t take as long as I dread.
Everything takes me longer than I expect, so of course the assembly of my new sideboard and reorganising my lounge stretched beyond Sunday into Monday.
I’m pleased with how it’s turned out; my desk is a lot less cluttered, and the rest of the room doesn’t feel as cramped as I’d feared. It’s also allowed me to put more books on display, which is a nice bonus! I’m still moving the smaller items around into their new homes, finding the best mix between aesthetics and practicality.
Most importantly, my desk is now a nicer and less distracting place to write.
All in all, I’m glad I did it.
When I accepted I wasn’t going to finish my home improvement on Sunday night, I finished reading The Blacktongue Thief (Blacktongue #1) by Christopher Buehlman and started writing my review. I began unsure what score I was going to give because I enjoyed it more than I initially thought its technical merit deserved; my piece ended up more in depth than I anticipated as I made sense of my my opinions.
My review went live on Wednesday.
As that review took up the first half of the week, and I wanted to continue revising The Spike Volume 2, I elected not to work on my next blogpost yet. I have decided against including a stripped-down version of my spreadsheet for my Creativity vs Consumption piece, and that will probably go live in the next couple of weeks.
At the time of last week’s WWW, in my revisions of The Spike Volume 2, I was at the beginning of another multi-chapter sequence that alternates between two scenes. All the action beats were in the right place, but they were big moments for the main characters and there wasn’t enough of their internal thoughts/feelings. Putting that detail in the right place, efficiently so as not to slow the pace, was a challenge, but I think the chapters are now much better.
Because I wanted to get that sequence done, and my review of The Blacktongue Thief took too long, I didn’t work on the cover for The Spike Volume 1 second edition this week. But I did happen across a piece about the art style of Mirror’s Edge, a game I really enjoyed, and realised that a slightly-stylised image would be easier to do than the high-realism I was struggling with.
I’m not saying I’m going to copy the game’s style, but it will be an inspiration (see weekly_inspiration below for more).
With my DIY this week, I had less time to split between creativity and consumption, but I remained disciplined and continued writing every day (my streak is up to 589 days). It would have been easy to use the reorganisation of my lounge as an excuse to take a day off, especially as I was moving my PC and all the cables, but I wrote before I began taking everything apart on Monday evening so I wouldn’t miss out on my session.
My creativity vs consumption figure increased from 44% last week to 47%, which is pleasing.
For the coming week, I may work on my next blogpost, but I want my main focuses to be revising The Spike Volume 2 and the cover for The Spike Volume 1 2nd ed.
It’ll be interesting to see what derails those plans.
Reading this week: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Strange Pictures by Uketsu
Watching this week: The Wire season 5
Playing this week: Red Dead Redemption 2 and Baba Is You
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 April 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.
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.
I used AI chatbots as a source of news for a month, and they were unreliable and erroneous
Eggie, Neo, Isaac and Memo are domestic robots. But would you let them load your dishwasher?
AI industry insiders launch site to poison the data that feeds them
Meta retreats from metaverse after virtual reality check
Furious AI Users Say Their Prompts Are Being Plagiarized
weekly_inspiration
Every week I share something that’s inspired my creativity.
This week, as mentioned in my_writing_week above, I was inspired by the art style of Mirror’s Edge. Don’t expect the cover of The Spike Volume 1 second edition to look quite like this – it’s set in the UK so there won’t be those blue skies for a start – but it could be possible to trace the lineage back here (and at least a couple of other places).
I played Mirror’s Edge quite a long time ago but remember it fondly; there wasn’t much in the way of combat, it was all about the parkour in a dystopian city.
If I didn’t have such a long list of unplayed games to get through, I’d be tempted to play it again.
It’s disappointing more games don’t include this kind of movement system.
What’s inspired you this week? Please share in the comments.
See you next week.
Arrowmaker Books 