Hello Everyone!
Man January was quite…something. It’s hard to ignore what’s going on in the world and just focus on your own personal projects. Admittedly there were points in the month where I felt rather deflated as things just seemed to be getting worse and worse. Still I recognized that, if I ever want to fulfill my dreams, I can’t let myself be stopped by the depressing evils of the world. I also can’t ignore it, knowing that doing so feels disrespectful for those suffering through these challenging times. Keeping up with the news while also staying positive has been a challenge this month for sure.
I’ve mostly been using this month as a study period of sorts. I’ve spent quite a lot of time studying and improving my ability to colour my artwork more efficiently. I really hope to get art commissions going this year both as a way to improve as an artist but also as a method of funding my book series. Being unemployed for almost all of 2025 stopped me from advertising my books very effectively which was quite unfortunate after releasing my third book. I’m hoping when things are more settled, I can start advertising my books once more.
In a bit of good and important news, I got past what felt like a massive block that was stopping me from continuing book for of The Legend of Nariko series. I felt really bad having made little progress as I was stuck on the transition aspect of book four to book five. It’s not just one book to the next, but also the transition of one story arc to the next. Trying to wrap this one up cleanly and start the next one has been a bit difficult, but luckily the amount of brainstorming this year has really helped me get past this writer’s block!
Now a bit of a challenge is the manga series I’m working on, Kaguya: The Wayfarer Chronicles. Script writing a manga has proven to be quite a challenging task. The translation from written words to the drawn panels is the part where I seem to be struggling most. My issue tends to stem from this transition aspect that as it’s so fundamentally different from how I normally write a story. That being said, I think I’ve found a solution that’s helped me a fair bit. Having a very rough outline and then just storyboarding from there. It feels akin to how I write The Legend of Nariko and feels more natural for me rather than a strict and rigid methodology.
While this is something that I’m very excited about and motivated to work on, there’s also the aspect of the book reviews I have seriously been neglecting. I do want to keep doing book reviews, but I’ve recognize that trying to do all these things while working a full time job is very difficult. I may have to move book reviews to once a month rather than every two weeks which I was also struggling to keep up with. I think I will aim for once a month for now and if I’m able to, move back to a review every two weeks.
I’m hoping to make this a very successful and productive year! Thanks for sticking around and reading my musings. I do hope these help. 😊
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 