So, I’m about 35,000 words into the first draft of book two. That sounds like a lot, and it is. But anyone who writes will know that a first draft is just the start. Karma's Burden went through about five drafts before my wife persuaded me that enough was enough. Still, the world of Karma’s Burden is expanding, and I’m excited (and sometimes daunted) by where it’s heading. But writing the next book has been complicated by something I didn’t anticipate: self-promotion. Publishing a book, I've discovered, doesn’t mean you get to retreat into your study and keep writing; it means stepping out into the world and telling people why they should care about your story. For me, that’s hard. As someone who’s autistic, I find promotion both exhausting and confusing. It doesn’t come naturally. I can write a novel about karmic debts and moral reckonings, but telling people to buy my book? That feels like another language. And once I’ve locked onto something, like learning how to “market myself”, it becomes very difficult to switch focus back to writing. My brain tends to work in binaries: it’s either all writing or all promoting. Context-switching has never been my strong suit. So the challenge now is balance: finding a way to keep sharing Karma’s Burden with the world while also giving book two the attention it needs. I don’t always get it right. But I’m learning that writing and promoting aren’t enemies. They’re different parts of the same journey. For [...]

After five years, countless drafts, more than a few episodes of crippling self-doubt, my debut novel Karma’s Burden is finally out in the world. You can now find it on Amazon, both as an ebook and in print. The story began life as the seed of an idea in my MA dissertation half a decade ago. At the time, I didn’t imagine it would grow into a full-length novel. But ideas have a way of haunting you until you do something about them. Slowly, draft by draft, the world of debts, reincarnation, and obligations demanded to be told. The process hasn’t always been graceful. In fact, only a few weeks ago I discovered—far too late for comfort—that every single page number in the manuscript had politely slipped over to the wrong side of the page. All after I had approved the layout, of course! Hours of formatting later, that problem was fixed, though not without muttering a few words I won’t repeat here. And then there’s my wife, who has borne the brunt of all this. Living with a neurotic creative type isn’t always fun—especially one who needs constant reassurance that he isn’t just wasting his time. She has been my sounding board, my sharpest critic, and my most patient ally. More than that, it was her response to the finished draft that persuaded me the book was worth publishing at all. If she hadn’t said, “Yes, it’s ready,” I might still be tinkering, revising, hesitating. So here we are: [...]