Progress Report May 2026

I started May with the first short story in Recollections. 

I also decided to rewrite the first three chapters of Rebellion. Ngl I'm very happy with the new chapters. It's a lot easier to keep the voice from the end at the beginning if you write the beginning at the end. (Read that sentence out loud three times).

My main project for May ended up being the third book in the series: Reformation. When April ended I was at 23k words. Now I'm at almost 41k words, and most of it happened in one single week. In that week I caused two character deaths, one breakup, and massive lore. 

Only the prequel, Revelation, has been ignored this past month and it's genuinely because I'm not sure where to go from the point I'm at. I know where the story is headed next, but if I go there immediately it'll be too much action too quickly. I need some every day mundane things to happen in-between. Allow the previous action to settle, let the characters get used to things, and then plunge them into a new situation that will eventually take the story where it needs to go.

Aside from the one week where I fastidiously wrote on Reformation, I've mainly been editing Rebellion. Like I mentioned I rewrote the first three chapters and since then I've been reading through, leaving comments for myself, rearranged the chapter division, updated word choices and removed repetition, and finally gone looking for the vague words editors and agents dislike and edited them to be stronger sentences. Rebellion grew slightly more wordy in this process and I'm foreseeing an even more increased word count before this current round of editing is over.

I've also been keeping up with my TikTok and Instagram accounts. I can't make posts every single day due to RL commitments, but it's been going pretty well anyway. For some reason Instagram is struggling even though I post the same things there as on TikTok and I use the same kind of hashtags... Anyway I've had both accounts for just over a month now and I'm at 80 followers on TikTok.

Currently the series consists of:

• Rebellion (Tanja is protag, 78k words)

• Resurgence (Hanabi is protag, 90k words)

• Revelation (Jack is protag, this is a prequel but should go after the sequel in publishing order, currently at 41k words)

• Reformation (Rasmus is protag, 23k words)

• Recollections (short story collection, takes place across the series' timeline and beyond, but should go after the third instalment in publishing order, 2k words)