I'm writing again....
- emily

- Jan 15, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 28, 2025
I've been sharing a lot on here recently - which is way more than I do in real life - and it's nice to be able to talk about my goals and milestones, whether someone reads it or not.

If you saw my last post, Scared of my Dream Job? this post continues on from that; so if you want to read that first, you can. If not - continue anyway.
So on the topic on being open, I've been really good at keeping to my new year goal, and managed to get a lot of writing done so far this year. I'm aiming to get the whole book completely redrafted and edited by February - for a secret project - and hopefully I can start to think about publishing; which both terrifies and excites me.
I'm absolutely terrified of sharing my work, and just to get the ball rolling, I'm sharing a 'very small' snippet of the novel I've been working on since 2020. Hopefully soon you'll get to read more...
Excerpt from Chapter Two ~
He didn’t leave the workshop for the next few hours, the light through the shutters gradually turned from a deep indigo into a pale violet as the clouds parted closer to midday; no one else came back into the workshop to check on him. But the shop grew even busier, clamouring voices and feet against the wooden floorboards carried through the thin walls. Only when the crowd had thinned, did River’s finally listen to his gurgling stomach and rubbed his eyes furiously. Too loud. Everything was too loud. He tapped his foot against the floorboards and groaned aloud at the creak it emitted; the headache only grew worse, thumping painfully against his eyes. Surely, he could just lie down here until Kit came to find him; and almost did, bowed his head against the floorboards just to see if the tension would lessen. It didn't. He sat back groggily and glanced across at the books already piled to one side; the glass beakers packed away on the table and extras stored in wooden crates underneath; and the remaining ingredients still scattered across the floor. Kit ordered them weeks ago: beeswax, herbal oil, leaf of the rafflesia plant - which had him holding his nose until it was bottled - he even found a wyvern scale which he was sure she didn’t order; but you could never have enough wyvern scale.
A rumble reverberated through the room so abruptly that River jolted forward, knees flat against the floor and hands reached up to brace on the table. The scale fluttered between the cracks in the boards; and near the armchair, the meticulous stack of book fell down with a quiet thud. By the time he righted himself, the vibrations had stopped, but the glass beakers on the benches clinked loudly in the following eerie silence.
River’s first thought was the room was moving, up, down, a trick of his pounding head, which was thumping wildly. His second, somehow, this was all Skye’s fault.
Outside the boarded-up windows, people muttered loudly; someone yelled, others cackling wildly for no apparent reason. Through the shop wall, there was a subdued hubbub, but Kit’s voice was bizarrely absent. River debated going for some fresh air – already striding for the hidden doorway – when the ground was torn from underneath him.
... would you like to see more?


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