Being Bad at Burnout
I’ve been plugging away, slowly (very slowly) but surely, on Noble Pursuits. It’s the first book in my trilogy called Noble Fates & Fortune. The books are three interlinked mm fantasy romances featuring gods, orcs, elves, and The Vampire. (I need to work on my pitch.)
(See the cover here! I don’t think I’ve shared it on my site yet. I’m gonna be honest: I’m thinking of changing it. Redrawing it. We’ll see, because…)
Noble Pursuits will hopefully come out by the end of summer? Hopefully? I’ve been struggling with burnout—diagnosed burnout. My therapist literally prescribed “doing nothing” for 7 days and it was very hard. In fact, I failed. Because whilst I didn’t allow myself to write, I did…draw. Wanna see?
I’ve been trying a new “inking” technique. These pieces are all digital, done in Procreate, so it feels a little funny to call it inking. But… That’s basically what I do. I’d share my process if I thought anyone was interested… The TLDR is that I sketch, then I ink, then I color. Simple! Ha. Except that they take me anywhere from 20-30 hours. (Which, to be clear, isn’t a terribly long time for big illustrations…)
This has revitalized me creatively, actually. I really want to create. My therapist was definitely onto something. (But she’s also retiring and that was my last session. Tragedy.)
In other news: if you tuned into my last blog, I mentioned doing an author event. I did it! It was fun, busy, and is probably not going to be repeated for a long while yet. I’m too green—I don’t have enough to sell to customers right now, and I certainly don’t have a “following” but maybe one day. And when (if?) that day comes, I’ll do author events for sure. Like I said, they’re fun! It did contribute to my burnout, I think, because I was so wound up (excited and stressed) and it took a long while to wind down.
But, okay. I’m resetting myself. The seven day ban has passed.
My goal, in the coming weeks, is to finish the first draft of Noble Pursuits. And then I can finally start sharing bits of it here! And elsewhere online. And, most excitingly, I can set a publishing date. Wish me luck, friends.
How has your 2026 been so far? Can you believe it’s May? Gosh.