The Writing Journey

It’s been a long time since I posted anything on my blog, though I kept updating projects pages. This year I intend to return with more awesomeness blogging about worldbuilding and science fiction in general. There’s a possibility of book reviews and other things, like indie author interviews. At least, that’s the plan and being somewhat lazy with social media I’d have to get my ass into gear to accomplish that.

Also, since I completed the Rjg Trilogy on February 15th 2025 and moved into revisions and edits stage, I hope to get it ready for publication at the end of the year, closer to Christmas (maybe earlier, but I’m just leaving myself more time to do things properly and without hurrying). It was a 9-year-and-4-months long journey to finish it and I can finally breathe without constantly stressing about the unfinished WIP. The story turned out much better than when I first outlined it back in late 2015. Moral of the story: outlines don’t work for me. I’m a hardcore pantser.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have anything else to write now. There’s still Falaha’s final story, Graveyard of the Gods, that sits at 38% and progresses at a slow pace. The story delves into deep cosmology of the series and ties up loose ends and hints from previous books. I plan to finish writing it this year and publish in 2026. After that, new projects await.

While I’m still in the stage of job hunting and have time on my hands, I shall focus on writing, beta-reading, and reading in general. I’m looking forward to an exciting and meaningful year, where I can utilize the unused potential.

Writing Notes: Breathing

I have a chapter in which my main character visits a cave. And while the air composition is different from Earth’s air, it got me thinking whether he would see a white cloud condensing from his breath.

Hot breath increases the relative humidity of the cold outside air as they mix. Once humidity reaches 100%, it results in breath condensation.

It may seem like a tiny thing when you describe setting & character, but it can provide indirect information to the reader.

If you want to know whether your or your character’s breath will condense into a white cloud in certain locations, you can use this calculator.

Falaha’s Journey Free Kindle Download

This week (November 24 & 25) I’m offering the first volume (a complete novel, no cliffhanger) of my Falaha’s Journey serial from the OS Universe series as a FREE download on Amazon. More links below.

This baby!

A young girl with ambi­tion.
A des­per­ate man on a mis­sion.
An ancient enemy set to wipe out their entire race.

When a seem­ingly sim­ple space res­cue mis­sion turns into a night­mare, Falaha, a Danna Com­man­der Trainee with a power she can’t use prop­erly yet, has her skills put to the ulti­mate test as her world begins to col­lapse, throw­ing her to the cen­ter of the con­flict that might wipe out her entire race.

The Danna are a species of humanoid aliens who share the Milky Way with human­ity. Unlike humans, they have been around for at least three bil­lion years and are the old­est species in the Galaxy. Born with an alien arti­fact in their blood, they pos­sess abil­i­ties sur­pass­ing any­thing any liv­ing crea­ture can dream of. How­ever, both their superb space tech­nol­ogy and their unusual blood legacy have attracted dan­ger no one expected. Aban­don­ing their home Galaxy, the remain­ing pop­u­la­tion sets out in secrecy to their last resort, Kan Diona, the place to wit­ness their vic­tory or to become their grave.

FALAHA’S JOURNEY is a vivid tale of alien species, races, and cul­tures, a fam­ily saga span­ning mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions and extend­ing across the Uni­verse, a tale of iden­tity, explo­ration, and self-discovery amidst a dev­as­tat­ing strug­gle for sur­vival, and a love story that touches the stars.

GET YOUR DOWNLOADS HERE:
Kindle US | Kindle UK | Kindle CA | Kindle AU | Kindle DE | Kindle FR | Kindle IT | Kindle ES | Kindle NL | Kindle JP | Kindle BR | Kindle MX | Kindle IN

Of Plots and Pants

I write my novels in bursts. Writing N words every day is a mantra that doesn’t work for me. I must visualize the whole chapter at once (or at least get an aha! moment for a certain scene) before I can write even a single sentence of it. That requires days of brewing the story in my head. Sometimes those chapters get written in several steps or parts depending on their size. A 2k chapter is usually done in one go in a single day or two. A 5k chapter can take a week or two, because I return to it over and over and add stuff (some research required). Things happen to get added a month later.

I have finished the first part of my WIP (12 chapter totaling in 31k) and I can say that outlining doesn’t work for this story either. Sure, I wrote quite a detailed outline for the whole thing (100k planned) and after slowly going through the first 12 chapter I can safely say that this outline is for some other novel I’m not currently writing. So I scrapped it and now I’m just going forward with a vague idea of the outcome of the whole thing. Which makes it more interesting to work on — I get surprised, I let the characters freely drive the plot and the inner logic of the world starts to dictate things well. At this point I don’t know what an ending scene would look like (I don’t even know what the next two parts will be like), I just want to get there organically. But I do know that there will be an epilogue with a scene from the far future, I just have to pick the right place in time for it; I have several candidates for that one, none of which make any thematic sense now, since I don’t know the first ending yet.

I admit that I’m moving at a snail’s pace here, but this story requires slow development. I’ll probably consume a whole crate of red wine to celebrate after I’m done with it. 😀

What are your writing habits and methods? How do you get the job done?