Progress Log
June 2026
Guys, The Muse and Her Thief is indefinitely on hold and will probably not be going out in late 2026, because I JUST GOT A FULL MANUSCRIPT REQUEST FROM BRANDON SANDERSON'S AGENT. I wasn't aware he was Brandon Sanderson's agent when I queried him. I think I got him from Anneliese's agents list.
Anyway, that's my second full manuscript request for The Muse and Her Thief, which I thought no sane tradpub professional would look twice at; and while I originally intended the entire Librarians project to be indie, I think I'm going to let this play out. Being traditionally published meant a lot to my fifteen-year-old self, so if I were to get an offer, I'd probably roll with it.
Past experience from querying A Reckoning of Dragons tells me that I likely won't hear back for 6 - 12 months, so I'm just going to continue drafting the trilogy and not worry too much about what's happening or not happening with Muse.
Forward progress on Tomb of the Roadbuilders this month was relatively negligible; I spent much of the month sidetracked drafting the world's messiest longhand short story outline in a battered raven journal in various parks and at the beach (told you the beach was calling). This is a story that's been kicking around in the back of my brain for probably seven years now, and I think it's finally time for it to see the light of day. It plays with the Romanian myth of the Solomonari, the Devil's pupils in his school beneath the earth. First line: "We who once learned at the feet of the Devil now beg for alms..." It was meant to be a short story, but considering that the outline fills about a third of the journal and still isn't quite finished, we may already be in novella territory.
I also wrote an entire screenplay. My experiences in unicorn hell the last few months led me to the erroneous belief that Hell was a monolith. It is not, and Unicorns wasn't even in the first ring. Unicorns was hanging out in Hell's balmy waiting room. I don't even have a nickname for this new screenplay. I blasted it out in nine days and no longer remember what it was about.
"The Medici Dragon" failed to place in BAEN, so it's off to Clarkesworld, and if that fails, Beneath Ceaseless Skies (actually my first choice, but they have a longer response time), and if that fails, you may be seeing a new tab on my website called "Short Stories."
Goal for July: Enjoy the summer. Make some headway in Librarians. Maybe draft the novella.
May 2026
Some forward progress; some backtracking; no bed bugs or short stories. We had a dark horse on the Trackbear this month—our friend Genni exploded onto the scene to beat out Anneliese and give me a run for my money.
Goal for June: I give up on my wildly overoptimistic word count goals for the summer; life always happens, and also, it's now bright and sunny and the beach is calling. Goal for June is just to make one chapter of headway into Act 2 for every chapter of Act 1 that I backtrack to rewrite.
April 2026
Steady progress; Act 1 of Tomb of the Roadbuilders is essentially done, although it needs a round of punch-ups. "The Medici Dragon" has been submitted to BAEN.
I've been called upon by my nerd friends to revive my long-fridged Librarians of Alexandria Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The inaugural session last Sunday revolved mostly around the party's quest to find the best shrimp scampi in alt-history Amalfi, blithely ignoring all my attempts to reimpose some plot.
I've escaped unicorn hell again and am now in steampunk dragon purgatory—I happen to have some affection for that script, even if we are presently on Draft 22 (I'm not kidding).
I'm particularly proud of this last-minute upset I managed to pull on the Trackbear:
Goal for May: Continue to plug away at Tomb of the Roadbuilders. I'm gunning for a full and readable first draft by the end of July.
March 2026
The month was off to a smashing start, with 20k written in seven days. Progress decelerated after Week 1 due to a rapid succession of houseguests: my brother, his friend, my cousin, my mom, and the bed bugs that hitchhiked in with one of them and took over my apartment. Turns out you basically have to disassemble your furniture, your pantry, your apartment, and your life to eradicate bed bugs. I now know how to take the plate off an electrical outlet.
On the other hand, Anneliese found a squirrel in the hood of her car, so I did not lose the Trackbear by as much as you'd expect.
I also drafted a Librarians of Alexandria novelette, "The Librarian of Apocrypha," about a swashbuckling librarian infiltrating a dangerous black market auction to steal a fledgling angel from under the noses of a rogues' gallery of criminals. It's now on submission to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. If they don't want it, I'll likely just upload it here for you guys.
I escaped unicorn hell only for the script to boomerang back into my inbox in record time with heavy rewrite notes.
Here is the Trackbear. You can see exactly the day I discovered the bed bugs:
Goal for April: Keep drafting Book 1. Also clean up the short story "Medici Dragon" for the BAEN Fantasy Adventure Awards.
February 2026
Guys, I did it. I did the thing. I threw out all 50k from January. Don't kill me.
This was a rollercoaster of a writing month. After several epic ten-hour plotting marathons holed up in an empty lecture hall on my old uni campus with my long-suffering dev editor, the Book 1 outline is fixed. Unfortunately, she persuaded me to listen to the voice that was trying to tell me that a.) the trilogy really wanted to be in first person, and b.) it also really wanted to open several months earlier in the timeline. Hence consigning 50k to the abyss.
It's fine. It's totally fine. (Deep breath.) The changes needed to happen. Who needs deadlines? Or sleep?
You guys, it's a really, really good outline. And Book 2 will be stronger for the foundation we're building in Book 1.
Lest you think this was a one step forward, two steps back month, I did also draft a short story, "The Medici Dragon," for the BAEN Fantasy Adventure Awards.
Anneliese wins the Trackbear this month. Outline words don't count.
In my defense, I also wrote an entire screenplay for my day job. All I can say about it is that it involves unicorns and when people have asked me how I am this month, my reply has been "still in unicorn hell."
Goal for March: Draft 50k of Book 1. Again.
January 2026
Book 1 Act 1 is sitting at about 52k, thanks almost entirely to my friend Anneliese, who is an absolute word count machine and kept me on my toes all month trying to keep pace with her on our writer Discord's word count leaderboard:
I eked out a narrow victory which necessitated a down-to-the-wire 5700-word day. Callias was trekking across the Egyptian desert for most of it. By the time I finished, I felt like I'd been trekking across the Egyptian desert.
Goal for February: With both the BAEN Adventure Awards deadline and the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly submission window reopening, emphasis next month will probably be on short stories. Anyway, I'd like to fix some holes coming up in the Book 1 outline before I fall into them.
December 2025
Holidays happened, productivity did not. I put in some hours in my favorite Portland coffeeshop (shoutout to the Jim & Patty's on Miller!) and managed to at least at least rough out the synopses for the full trilogy and a working outline for Book 1.
Goal for January: Draft 50k of Book 1.
November 2025
I now have two Librarians short stories and two novelettes in the drawer, which I will pull out, polish up, and toss your way when I need a way to procrastinate something else more urgent. If you ever wanted to know how a gorgon is created, where the astronomy department acquired the real live angel, or why the Colossus of Rhodes is neck-deep in the Mediterranean, these are for you.
Goal for December: finalize outlines for the main trilogy.
October 2025
As of the end of this month, The Muse and Her Thief (Librarians of Alexandria #0.5) is officially done and more or less version-locked. I won't be committing to a release date just yet, because I want to have the first two books of the main trilogy drafted before I launch anything. I'm thinking ARCs will go out late 2026 / early 2027.
Goal for November: Honor the spirit of dearly departed NaNoWriMo by writing 50k. Not quite ready to draft the main trilogy yet, but I have some short story hooks I might take for a spin.