the beta begins.

Today, a polished (but not perfect) draft of Before the Lotus Blooms went into the hands of a few select beta readers, tasked with reading through the manuscript and sharing with me their unfiltered thoughts about the story, characters, and world I’ve created. Nothing is more nerve-wracking to me than to have someone actually perceive my craft, so while I am especially excited to finally share Jaeyun and Yuzeharu’s tale with someone other than myself, I’m equally as nervous.

Beta reads should be completed around the beginning of September, where I’ll then hone the manuscript with the feedback I receive to make it the best it can be before being sent out to my editor in October.

While the betas are reading, I’ll continue to share more and more about the story, leaking out a little bit by bit to whet your appetite and hopefully get you all hungry for the full three-course meal happening tentatively in March. Trust me, it’s going to be filling.

The word count honestly got away from me while writing this book, and while it still has rounds of edits to go through before the count can be tallied and finalized, I don’t foresee it changing too much. It should end up being between 125-128k. My goal was only 100k, to match its predecessor, Dance on the Sun, which ended at 104k. Every time I’d inch closer to the finish line, I’d end up having to add a new chapter to my outline to make room for all the necessary moving parts before the end of the story.

The writing process for Before the Lotus Blooms was incredibly different to Dance on the Sun, which I wasn’t expecting. DOTS came together in four short months; BTLB has been 2 years of writing and rewriting, changing the names of characters, their ages, their motivations, completely flipping the dialogue, some personality traits, and changing the end of the story even just a few weeks ago, after finishing my second round of self-edits.

It’s been a labor of love, and now I’ll get to know if it’s really any good.

I have some confidence in myself that at the very least, it’s a story I enjoy and would want to read, so I hope my betas feel the same way, and I hope you will too.

There was a tease in my previous blogpost about a possible release this year prior to BTLB, but unfortunately that won’t come to fruition. The idea is solid, but the novella I wanted to release will be a part of a 4 book series, and I’d rather have them all release one after the other. In order to do that, they’ll all need to be written in succession, and edited the same way. They’ll be related to the seasons, so their release dates will each be three months apart. I can’t make any promises, since there’s 4 novellas there that will have to be written yet (I’ve started but am nowhere close to being finished) so…maybe 2027?

I have two other books in the works; the third installment of Tales of Angaride, which we’ll just call TOA 3 for now, and a standalone title whose acronym is BFBC. I’ll share more about that in this latter half of the year.

For now, I’m just content to have a short break from Before the Lotus Blooms while the betas do their thing, and then it’ll be back to the grindstone to make sure I’m able to publish in spring of next year.