Kassie’s Author Journal: Six Months In

 Six Months In

September, 2026

Hi, everyone! Welcome to Kassie´s Author Journal, a place where I update you on my writing progress. I had originally planned to do one every month, but the truth is that really nothing has happened in the last six months. So, here I am with a big update on what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and how. So, please, take some time and let’s catch up.

First of all, my first six months of being an independent author sadly has been entirely in line with the experience of indie authors all over the world throughout all time. Screaming into the void, overshadowed by all the other creative endeavours and AI abominations. But aside from all that, according to my website stats, I’ve averaged one view of the website every couple of days with an all-time high of four, and only a few making it to the preview chapters. To those handful of you that gave my first chapter a shot, thank you.

I do feel like my marketing and general inexperience are a bit to blame. Writing is what I am passionate about and I want people to read it, but that act of selling it just makes me feel a bit uneasy. Which leads me to my Patreon. As you can see, I currently have no subscribers given that I’m an unknown author with nothing under their belt. That´s why I’m going to revamp the whole thing:

1)     Drop it down to three tiers instead of the current four.

2)     Have the free tier remain as is, but potentially start a Discord channel. A lot of other creators I follow do it and it could be fun. We’ll see.

3)     The cheapest tier will act is an early access for my main stories and having posted to the website for free a month later.

4)     The slightly more expensive tier will give access to everything else: short stories, world guide entries, etc.

I think it’s a better deal for everyone, because in the end, the important thing about being an author is that people read my stories. Getting paid is just a nice bonus.

In terms of my main projects, Dreams of Sapphos is coming along nicely. I’ve got a new short story about Florentine in the editing phase that I’d like to release soon. It has a darker tone to the other stories I’ve ever written, but hopefully you’ll like it. Plus, I’ve also started work on several other prequel shorts and the Interlude short stories that bridge the gap between Dreams and Memories of Sapphos. Yay! Title reveal for book two! I also have a spin-off in the works that I’m so excited to dig into, but that won’t be happening until after the main series wraps up.

My side projects are a bit less focused and unorganised, but I want to tell you about them regardless.

            I’ve been working on a pulp sci-fi adventure series about smugglers in the finest tradition of Star Wars, Firefly, Killjoys, a little of The Expanse. They are going to be infrequently released and a little rough around the edges as a fun thing to do alongside Odyssey to Sapphos. They will be longer, 10-15k words, and mostly episodic adventures with a loosely connected plot. I’d call them cosy, because that’s the kind of thing I’m into, but I’m not sure they’d be categorised as such.

            A project I’m a little farther along on is my space opera retelling of Jason and the Argonauts. It will be my B project to Sapphos’ A, and my first solo project. A few years ago I got two thirds of the way through the novel but put it on hold to go full-on into Sapphos. However, I’ve recently finished the second draft of the outline, having tightened it up and gotten a more solid idea of what I want to do with it. It’s a story that currently fits where I am in life and deals with a lot of subjects I want to tackle. It’s also fun to take a big swing with a classic story that has been told and retold over the last several millennia and will continue to be long after everyone’s forgotten mine. There’s something liberating about that.

I intend to keep working on the larger Odyssey to Sapphos series as my primary focus with the other mentioned projects bubbling in the background. This includes revamping my author platform (Get ready for that!) and trying to get myself out there more.

Hopefully, I’ll stay on track, but the world in general and a lot of moving parts of my personal life are pressing in on me in rather rough ways. Such is life, I guess. Being an author is the one thing I want to be in life, and I don’t intend to give that up so easily. I’m going to be 30 next year and I intend to make that the start of something wonderful.

Thanks everyone for reading,

Kassie