There is a moment in any creative pursuit when the dream becomes work.
Not less meaningful. Not less sacred. But work.
Right now, as an independent publisher, I am deep in more moving parts than I can easily name. There are marketing promotions running. Creative assets to build and refine. Campaigns to monitor. Files to update. Metadata to adjust. Review content, retail profiles, book descriptions, author pages, press materials, preorder information, and all the small invisible pieces that make a book feel like it truly exists in the world.
There is Amazon. There is Ingram. There are files and formats and approvals. There are images, quotes, pages, posts, newsletters, pillars, plans, and the constant quiet question of whether everything is ready.
And then there are the reviews.
That part is hard to describe unless you have lived it. The anticipation. The anxiety. The hope. The small rush of fear that comes right before opening the email. My heart still races each time one comes in. I want them to be good, of course. I would be dishonest if I pretended otherwise. But I also want to learn from them. I want to understand what readers are seeing. I want to know where the work is landing, where it is reaching people, and where I can become better.
There is joy in that. But there is vulnerability too.
At the time of writing this, I still have materials to prepare for local bookstores. I have not yet had the time to take that step the way I want to. I am still planning content, refining imagery, choosing quotes, thinking through design, and trying to build an ecosystem around the books that feels honest to the work itself.
And now the audiobook is becoming real too.
I have the final files from the incredibly talented A’rese Emokpae, and I am preparing to dive in, listen fully, and begin working that part of The Chronicles of Durajan into the larger world of Alania Press. It is another strange and beautiful threshold: hearing the work carried by another voice, another artist, another interpretation.
All of it is becoming part of a cycle I am beginning to recognize.
The learning. The challenge. The anxiety. The joy. The vulnerability. The passion. The humility.
They arrive together now. Not one at a time. Not neatly. They move in a pattern I am slowly getting used to, like a mental state that belongs to this stage of the journey. It can be overwhelming. It can be exhausting. But it also feels alive.
I have incredible support from my wife and children, from close friends, and from distant colleagues who have offered encouragement at just the right moments. I remind myself often that this began as a passion project. It still is.
But I would be dishonest if I said I did not dream of it becoming more.
And now, with Book Two complete and nearly out in the world, that dream feels different than it once did. The passion is still there, but it is now accompanied by pride. Not arrogance. Not certainty. Something quieter than that.
I have written two novels exploring and exposing some of my deepest questions. Questions about memory, faith, identity, survival, power, love, grief, and the need to be remembered. And now those questions are being seen. The world is being understood. The characters are being felt. The themes are reaching people.
That is the “more” I hoped for.
Not fame. Not some sudden arrival. Not a lightning strike.
Just connection.
The sense that something I carried for so long in private has begun to live in the minds and hearts of others. That the story is no longer only mine. That the questions I poured into the Durajan are being met by readers with questions of their own.
That is what I will carry into Book Three and Book Four.
And maybe that is the thought I want to leave here, especially for anyone with a story to tell, a dream to pursue, questions to ask, or a voice that has been aching to be heard.
Honor your voice.
Let yourself be heard.
Let yourself be led by your passion, even if no one is watching yet. Even if all you can do today is write a thought in your own journal. Even if the first step is small, private, imperfect, and uncertain.
That still counts.
Sometimes the work begins there.
Sometimes the meaning begins there.
Sometimes the life you are trying to build starts with a sentence no one else has read yet.
Write it anyway.
