An indie author’s regular spoiler-free update on his writing, editing, cover design, marketing, publishing, website maintenance, and blogging. Issue 72.
This week in one word: restful.
my_writing_week
Previously on WWW…
Over the next seven days, I’ll finish reading The Well of Ascension (Mistborn Saga #2) by Brandon Sanderson so will post a review. I’ll continue revising The Spike Volume 2 and designing the cover for The Spike Volume 1 second edition.
I’ve remembered I have four more short stories to add to The Spike Series Bible, and they should hold some detail that will filter through to parts 2 and 3 of The Spike Volume 2, so I need to get going on that too.Away from writing, I’m going to make my usual holiday pilgrimage to my local bookshop, and I’d like to finish Red Dead Redemption 2 because I’ve been playing it too damn long.
I’ve been on holiday from my day job all this week, and intended to spend a lot of it writing, until I accepted how mentally tired I was. So instead, I decided to make this a restful week and disregard my usual aim of hitting 50% for my creativity vs consumption percentage.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t done some writing; I had a streak to maintain (now 680 days).
As anticipated, I finished reading The Well of Ascension (Mistborn Saga #2) by Brandon Sanderson, my first five-star read of 2026 at the eighth attempt. My full review is here.
I had a couple of sessions on the cover design for The Spike Volume 1 second edition. I’m quite happy with the layout and that I’ve got the scale of everything right now; the next task is to gradually build up the detail.
As with last week, most of my writing time this week was spent revising The Spike Volume 2, with another ten chapters done.
When working on one of the chapters, I realised I’d made a mistake re the number of people in a certain group that appeared in Volume 1. This mistake impacted at least four chapters in part 2 of Volume 2, and two chapters in part 3. In working out how to fix it, I investigated a couple of possibilities and came up with one that will add a nice twist in a later chapter, that I likely wouldn’t have come up with otherwise.
Call it luck, call it opportunism, but I love it when a mistake results in an improvement!
Of the four short stories I need to add to The Spike Series Bible, one of them needs a little editing first. I can start on the others, but haven’t yet.
Away from writing, I made my usual holiday visit to a bookshop and added more books to my ever-increasing to-be-read pile. I went with a list of four, but they didn’t have two of them, so I (over)compensated by buying four others (six in total):
- Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
- Wolf Worm by T Kingfisher
- The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
- Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
I’d hoped to finish playing Red Dead Redemption 2 this week. I’ve reached the final chapter, but haven’t completed the main storyline yet. There’s no doubt it’s a good game, but I would’ve preferred if it was shorter (I particularly could have done without a diversion to a new location in chapter 5). I’m looking forward to finishing it so I can start something else – my list of to-be-played games is even longer than my pile of to-be-read books.
I’ll be back to the day job on Monday so will need to kick my brain back into gear by then. My creativity vs consumption target for next week will be 50%, as usual.
My writing tasks for the coming seven days are: to continue revising The Spike Volume 2 and designing the cover for The Spike Volume 1 second edition; to edit the short story 0.6, and to add the four short stories to The Spike Series Bible; and to pick a topic for my next blogpost.
Plenty to do. Holidays are never long enough.
Reading this week: All That We See or Seem (Julia Z #1) by Ken Liu and Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker
Watching this week: Ludwig season 1
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.
I’ve resumed work 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.
Draft 3 is under way for The Spike Volume 2!
Volume 2 is my biggest and 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 (that keeps growing) 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.
I have other project ideas that are on the backburner:
Project Lawless is a non-fiction book.
Project Fang is a fiction book that I’m still trying to work out a way to incorporate into The Spike.
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.
Children facing ‘massive’ impact of AI bullying
Quantum computers are coming to break our codes faster than anyone expected
Finance ministers and top bankers raise serious concerns about Mythos AI model
Unemployed Britons turning up to job interviews to find the interviewer is an AI robot
Amazon to spend $11bn on satellite firm in growing Starlink rivalry
weekly_inspiration
Every week I share something that’s inspired my creativity.
This week, I spent way too much time on YouTube, and I came across a really good piano cover of a couple of tracks from The Dark Knight soundtrack.
The Dark Knight OST by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard has long been on my shortlist to use when writing. The piano cover below by Katherine Cordova reignited my interest in listening to it; the original of the first track she covers, A Dark Knight, is also included below, complete with those chilling, iconic “Joker” strings.
What’s inspired you this week? Please share in the comments.
See you next week.
Arrowmaker Books 