Hello everyone, welcome to the latter half of 2026!
How has the world been treating you? I have been coping, mostly because I am just concentrating on small regular goals rather than anything too massive.
For example. . .
My serial over on Royal Road! Can you believe we are up to chapter 37 already? And I somehow found the time to write 7 chapters for a contest as well? Absolutely flabbergasting, my word count has been through the roof this first of the year and I am just crossing all my fingers that I can keep it going. It’s all thanks to my regular Twitch Streams where I run writing sprints. I go from 10 am to 1pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and it is amazing what that 9 hours a week can get when you really lock in and focus. Link here if you are interested in joining us!
So what’s all this writing for, anyway?
Well my big project of the year has been my serial, Goddess of Disaster. This is a continuation of the short story I wrote last year, Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss. GGG was about Leonora Lionhelm, the goddess of Gateways and Locks, while GoD is about her niece, Soleil. Who is the Goddess of, well . . . No points for guessing that!
The first chapters went up at the beginning of March and I have been posting two a week ever since. That schedule is pretty hard to keep to, but I’ve only missed three posts and I feel really good about that. Obviously it would be better if I had missed none, but the first two were following a trip when I came back full of the travel sniffles and wasn’t much use for a bit, and the third (this past Tuesday) was because I used up all my writing energy on my second project of the year – Lizette VS. The Monarchy!
Lizette VS. The Monarchy was an idea I had aaaages ago and I was inspired to pick it back up again when I saw the writing prompt for the latest Royal Roads Magazine Contest. The prompt was, “The person you pretend to be” and the second I saw it I had a big smile on my face because I knew this story would be perfect. Of course, as usually happens with me, once I had actually started writing things changed a fair bit from the vague shape I had started with. For one thing the story doesn’t even start with Lizette, or a fantasy world, but with a character named Emily in the “real” world.
The story is an Isekai, so we have someone travelling from the “real” world into a fictional one and taking over the role of someone in that world. Though it is not going to be a smooth transition for Emily as she not only has to put up with the Lizette of the current moment, but also one from the future! And she thinks she can handle that, oh dear.
The story is set in an alternate, fantasy version of 1770s France. Just before the French Revolution, but when the first sparks were starting to fly. It is a fascinating era and I will have a lot of fun dipping back into that story from time to time.
I got the first arc done so that it could be a complete-ish story for the contest, which tallied up to about 9000 words or so. Plenty for a short story and I just hope the judges enjoy it! Today is the deadline for getting to the minimum word count, so I am keeping an eye on the contest page to see how many people make it over that first hurdle. We are starting with 411 contestants, by the way. Not terrifying at all. Nope, not at all.
If you would like to check out the stories I have been posting to Royal Road the links are here:
Plus if you would like join Royal Road, either as a reader or a writer, please use my referral code as it will get us both some benefits. Here is a link for that and the code itself RR-4669-9738
Aside from writing, I have been up to my usual nonsense. Travelling the length and breadth of Britain to go to various LARP events, which has been great fun! My character at Empire LARP continues to watch as the world goes sideways around her. This time she was present to watch the grilling of the Archmage of Night after it was revealed that she was a traitor to the Empire, working with the terrifying creatures, the Whisper Gallery, Eternals of Secrets! Meanwhile, the night before, her boss and inspiration, Serenus Starsong, spontaneously combusted!
What can I say, it was a bit of a hectic event.
I hope you have managed to battle through the monsters to find some joy this year, It’s been a tough one.
Much love and, as always, stay safe out there,
K
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