Warning: a lot of waffle lies ahead. Skip to the last few paragraphs if you just want to know my plans. (No, not plans, I don’t make plans any more. Vague intentions? Nebulous thoughts? Hopes? Yeah, probably hopes.)
Hello, everyone, I hope you’re doing well.
It’s been a while since I last did one of these. Sorry about that, but life, as I’m sure we’re all feeling, has been pretty rough lately. These last two and a half years have been particularly tough, dealing with depression, losing my grandmother, helping deal with her house, battling some legal things and then losing my dad suddenly at the end of last year. To top it all off, I have ME/CFS (I’ve had it since I was 11) and it’s been hitting my really hard of late.
Normally I don’t talk about any of this stuff, because I know it isn’t interesting to anyone – it certainly isn’t to me! – and I hate to whine. However, I felt like I needed to explain a few things, because while I have been posting Misfits of Aquila for most of the last year, I’ve been struggling with pretty much everything else.
Misfits was a difficult book for me. I love the characters and there are parts of it I like (mostly the miryhls playing cards), but the book itself feels disappointing. I don’t know if it reads that way to anyone else or if everything else has just crowded in to taint the story for me. I don’t know, but it’s made me less than enthusiastic about it and the rest of the series.
That doesn’t mean I’m abandoning it. I’ve already written the second book, which I dislike even more, but since I was writing it between losing my grandmother and sorting out her legal stuff, then losing my dad and dealing with his, I don’t think it’s entirely the book’s fault. Throw in the fact that it was originally (when initially plotting the series in mid 2019) supposed to have a plague in it, and yeah. I changed that.
I’ve sort of started book three too, which may or may not be the last in the series – I think probably yes, but I have a fourth title, so we’ll see how things pan out. However, that stalled somewhere in the third chapter because I decided after all these years that I needed a floor plan of Aquila, which kind of broke my brain.
All of which is a lot of waffle trying to explain that I’m taking a small break from the Overworld. I normally do in the summer anyway, but it usually doesn’t show because I have a backlog of stories to share. Sadly, my writing has suffered of late and I haven’t got a lot done, which means I have very little to cover the gap. Well, I mean, I have plenty but it either needs an edit or would start everything heading in a direction I’m not yet ready to follow.
While I usually only leave a month or so between uploading one book and the next, while I prep the ebook for release, I’m not doing that this time. Misfits needs a bit more work than I have brain power for right now and Outcasts of Aquila (book 2) isn’t anywhere near ready to share. I’m also a little bit fed up of the Overworld right now. After finishing the Wingborn and Dragonlands series, then launching into the Aquila’s Originals, as well as another series based around the foundation of Aquila, I find myself in need of a break. I need another world, different characters and more magic.
Hopefully, I’ll be back in September (possibly October), ready to continue with my misfits’ tale. In the meantime I hope to spend the next few months messing about with my young mages, and perhaps rewriting Mages of Royas Bay and finally releasing it to buy. I might even get back to sorting out the rest of the Wingborn series as paperbacks, but I’m trying not to make plans. Plans have a nasty way of backfiring on me lately and I am too tired for more fallout.
But enough of me. I hope you all have a lovely summer (or winter, if you’re south of the equator) and are keeping safe and well, or as well as can be expected, all and everything considered.
Thank you if you made it all the way to the end of this, sorry for the essay, and take care, my lovelies!
Becca Lusher 