Creator Journals 4/29/25

I promised myself I’d finish editing my book “Hounds of Ruin” by the end of May and release it May 9th. This one has been in the oven for quite a while. I have a distinct memory of writing out the outline during downtime at my job in October of 2023. That might not seem like a long time, but considering the fact that these books were initially supposed to be short-reads that would only take me a month to write, that’s a while. They aren’t really short reads anymore either. My first entry “Web of Bones” came to roughly 16k words, 54 pages at 1.5 space on a Google Doc. 

The length of each novel has increased, because I have no respect for genre or tradition, and because somewhere along the line I became passionate.
While Web of Bones is a short tale about a lost boy who almost gets eaten by a giant spider and meets a necromancer, Hounds of Ruin is a 40k word exploration of toxicity, religious dogma and mortality (and mutant dogs, but mostly that other stuff).
I’m really proud of what it has become. By the time I’ve reached the final book, I bet I’ll be rivalling Patrick Rothfus in word count.
So, while I’m in no place to offer advice (I have had no traditional success as of yet) I will offer my thoughts anyway, not as a master but a fellow journeyman. 

You don’t need to begin with an ambitious concept. All the grandness will happen naturally if you keep working, like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Become the avalanche. That’s what I intend to do.

Become the avalanche.