March’s busyness extended well into April, with many social outings and an extended weekend trip that demanded much of my time and attention. My schedule is finally calming down, and I’m looking forward to becoming a hermit for most of May. But first, I have much to share from this past month.
News & announcements
Most important to mention is that the release of The Devouring was phenomenal! Never have I felt such an incredible outpouring of love and support from my family and friends. Preorders amounted to over 45 sales and $100 in royalties, which was far beyond anything I’d ever imagined. For a single day after its release, The Devouring was #17 on Amazon’s best sellers list for cosmic and eldritch horror. As people received their paperback copies, they sent me photos. They’ve written reviews and left ratings on Goodreads and The StoryGraph, ensuring that The Devouring has hovered near 4.75 stars.
Seriously, from the bottom of my heart—
To accompany my book’s release, I also featured as a guest interview on Hope Engel’s YouTube channel and Bradley Ramsey’s podcast, Saved as Draft. Check them out below!
Writing update
Aside from The Devouring’s release, April went nothing like I expected. I anticipated resuming the first draft of Crucible of the Broken Moon once I was back from my trip, and while I did write 9,797 words and finish three chapters over the course of the month, I realized an alarming truth: I was not having fun writing this book.
There were things about it I liked, though. I loved the main characters and the romance between them. I loved a couple of key setting and lore pieces I had fun developing. But I felt like I was going through the motions with my outline, writing good prose and plot beats, while wrestling endlessly with the amount of worldbuilding the story demanded. It was like dragging myself through barbed wire. I was confident I could produce a well-written book—duology, actually—at the end of the process, but at what cost?
Suffice to say, I had a moment of crisis. I confided in several writer friends, who listened and gave excellent insight. After all our conversations, I’ve decided to set Crucible aside and rework the love story into a new novel. I’ve done some preliminary brainstorming sessions, setting it in a fictional, Earth-based city in the near-distant future. It will have elements of science fiction and fantasy but be grounded in reality. I am calling it RewriteWIP for now and have put a tracker on my Books page for it. My goal is to work on the essential worldbuilding and preliminary outlining in May and June, then begin drafting in July with intent to finish it by the end of the year.
In this last week of April, I’ve reread the first draft of The Heart Is a Weapon, my vampire novella, and left comments to myself on what changes I need to make for the story edit. The plan is to work on the second draft of Heart during May and June so that it’s ready for alpha readers by July. It’s going to be a busy next few months, but I’m very excited for both these projects!
Recent delights
- I had the extreme pleasure of reading There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm while I was on my extended weekend trip, and it is brilliant in both concept and execution. At times while reading, I kept going back and forth to reread the passages, stunned by the choices qntm made in the prose. I highly recommend the book to anyone who loves cosmic horror and, specifically, SCP lore.
- While our Vampire: the Masquerade game is paused, one of my friends is running a short Exalted: Essence campaign for those who can make it. We’ve been making characters during these past two weeks, and I’m really impressed with the massive amount of lore in the books. I hope we can start playing soon!
A. M. Shilling 
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