 It was September 2021, and I was on holiday. I was with my husband in Santorini, Greece, on the kind of holiday where you spend most of your time lying on a sun lounger not doing very much—the kind where you go away just to have a break from doing stuff. On these kinds of holidays I get a chance to read; and read I did! My life is often so filled with stuff that I don’t find the time, or the headspace, to read, so holidays provide space where I can fill my time with time-fillers—like reading. So there I was, reading books in the sunshine, when I had an epiphany. I could write a novel at work! This sounds like a bit of a dubious connection, but bear with me. Reading fantasy novels reminded me that I loved fantasy novels; it also reminded me that a novel of my own had been rattling around my head for over a decade and still hadn’t been written. In 2010, I was in a graduate-level job and was somewhat under-employed. I had to sit at my desk all day, but I didn’t have enough work to fill my time. No one really cared what I was doing. I was kind of surplus to the team—slotted into various departments to learn about the business, without a real role as such. I was bored, so I decided to start writing a novel. I could merrily tap away at my computer, looking busy, but doing something completely non-work-related. The novel I wrote in 2010 was called To Save a Pegasus. It was about a teenage girl from Earth who stumbled through a portal to another world and ended up embroiled in a mission to save a Pegasus from an evil queen. I wrote it, tried to get it published, failed, and gave up writing for eleven years. But while I was busy not writing much, I did come up with an idea for another story. I wanted to explore the idea of sending more characters from Earth to fantastical places, but this time, it would be a woman who was a long-lost heir to a throne, and her husband, who was an officer in the Royal Engineers. And in this story, they’d not travel through a portal; instead, they would travel across the galaxy to a faraway planet where a magic field replaced the magnetic field, and Earth natives could become uber-sorcerers. The basic concept remained unchanged, but the execution certainly evolved a lot over the eleven years I spent mulling the story over. I actually started writing it twice and gave up after a few chapters on both occasions after not really getting into it. But I still thought about the story every now and then, and it evolved into a trilogy—but it only existed in my head; until September 2021, that is. At that time, I was employed on a full-time contract working for the Army. But I found myself somewhat under-employed. I’d tried to come up with projects to fill my time, but I kept getting told to get back in my box—the problems I was trying to solve didn’t sit within the remit of our department, apparently. So I was left to stare at a screen, bored, in case anyone Skype-called me. So that epiphany I mentioned happened because I was reading again, which reignited my love of fantasy, which made me think of that novel I’d been mulling over for over a decade, which reminded me of that time I wrote a different novel while bored at work. So, I decided that when I got back to my desk, I would start writing book 1 of my trilogy. By Christmas 2021, the first draft of book 1 was written. In the new year, I started on book 2. By Easter 2022, I’d quit my job due to not being stretched enough and was busy working my notice before I’d start a new job working for Amazon. I’d also finished the first drafts of books 2 and 3. Then I started on the sequel trilogy. By the time my contract ended at the end of July 2022, I’d finished the first drafts of books 1 and 2 of my second trilogy and started on the third. Meanwhile, I’d had friends and family read book 1, made a few tweaks, and tried to get it published. I talk all about this novel’s journey in a blog post I wrote in August 2024. You can find it here if you’re interested. The amusing thing is that at the time I wrote that post, I thought that novel’s journey was almost finished! It wasn’t. It had a long way to go. I won’t bore you with the details, but to summarise, I published it in May 2025, then unpublished it soon after. Why? Several reasons—the main one being that it got review-bombed thanks to a little Twitter storm I got embroiled in. But looking back, I’m starting to think that was perhaps a blessing in disguise. If I hadn’t been review-bombed for something that had nothing to do with my novel, I wouldn’t have unpublished it. But the thing is, it went out with flaws. It hadn’t been edited as thoroughly as it should have been because I’d been let down with editors and was determined to hit my publishing date. Its plot was perhaps not as tight as it should have been, either. So I did some more work on it, got it beta read, digested the feedback, tweaked it some more, got it edited—again, and now it’s ready. Proofed and polished to within an inch of its life, the bloody thing is as it is now and isn’t getting changed again! So that’s Path to Power. But I mentioned I wrote another five books besides. What was going on with all these during this period? I didn’t just abandon them in draft form; they got work too. To roll back a little, after I finished my first trilogy, tried to get it published and got nowhere, I had a pro manuscript review done, and when I read it, I realised book 1 stank. It needed so much work that I couldn’t face it right then, so I decided to publish my sequel trilogy instead and come back to my first trilogy later. My second trilogy was written after I’d practiced writing on another three books, so it was, of course, better. It didn’t need as much work to get it into a decent state, I thought, so I could polish these books, publish, then after, polish the first trilogy and publish the first trilogy second. It worked for Star Wars, why shouldn’t it work for me? So my second trilogy, The Offspring Trilogy, was pro-edited, polished, and published in 2023. All three books got good reviews. I sold a few hundred copies. But I just couldn’t seem to build the momentum I hoped for. Sales began to dwindle, and my read-through from book 1 to 2 wasn’t great. I was starting to think book 1, The General’s Son, had flaws. Not massive flaws, granted. It wouldn’t have got good reviews if it were a bad story. I just suspected it took a bit too long to get going and maybe lost readers early on. I wanted a professional opinion on this story before I did anything else, so I paid for a manuscript review. The review confirmed my suspicion about the start, but it suggested that a few other things weren’t working as well as they could, either. So, around a year after The General’s Son was released, I unpublished it—with 39 reviews averaging 4.5 stars.  Condor moment time. I took a deep breath and decided to start over. I’d re-write my first trilogy. I’d tweak The General’s Son, I’d then get all six books ready and shiny and polished and launch the whole lot of ‘em, starting with The Queen of Vorn (since renamed to Path to Power) in May 2025.
As mentioned earlier, The Queen of Vorn was published, then unpublished soon after, pending a re-brand and some more work. So, after another round of editing, all six books will be out this year. Book 1 is now out. Books 2 to 6 will be out at six-week intervals until they have all been released into the world. For good, this time. I’m not un-publishing again!
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