Too Many Book Ideas?

and 2025 plans, a "Behind the Curtain" article

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Wherein Leanne talked about having too many books to write and not enough time, plus 2025 writing/scheduling plans, plus the one change she plans to make.

That was weird writing it in third person. Moving on…

What is it with book ideas flooding in all at once? There doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to write all of them (and have a life). There’s one change I am planning to make that will hopefully create a little more room, but more on that later.

I was doing well writing one book of The Môrdreigiau Chronicles after the other, until I needed to add a book to the three-book trilogy, and then I started writing short stories and then I agreed to write Hiraeth for the now-defunct Stardust Press.

Temptations arose. Reading

Ben Woestenburg

‘s Locksley had me longing to return to my own unfinished Arthurian novel. The shiny new book idea I got back in October is now leaving the novella station and headed to novel land. (That’s Obsidian & Flame, if you’ve been keeping up—I’ll be writing more about that later.)

I mean look at this to-write list:

• Hiraeth (monthly, when I’m ready to start its second season)

• Obsidian and Flame (this new shiny idea isn’t done with me yet and the characters keep doing new and surprising things)

• A Sword for Wellington (book 3 of The Môrdreigiau Chronicles, still writing, will be scheduled after Part 2 or 3 of O&F)

• “Moonstone” novella (old ms and new outline): if I go ahead with this, it will slot in between books 3 and 4 and do a little filling in of the um, potential 5-10 year gap between books

• A Soul for the World (Book 4, erm, the opening chapters and the close-to-last scene are done, lots of writing still to do, but I am laying the seeds for it in A Sword for Wellington)

• Arthurian-set prequel (an older ms that I never finished, featuring Mark of Cornwall, among others. Now we’ll find out what happened to the Greal.)

How am I going to write them all?

2025 Plans

By making plans? Yes … and in case you’re interested see more details in the following paragraphs, but also, I still intend to make a change.

A River Trembles will finish in May. It will be followed by some or all of a 15-20 part Obsidian and Flame. I adore the two characters in this but they are also kicking my butt to have everything land just right and I can just tell it won’t be ready in time to launch in February as I originally planned even if I dedicate the next few weeks to finishing it. Which I’m not because I’ll also be working on book 3—

A Sword for Wellington, the third book in The Môrdreigiau Chronicles, will launch after that in July/August-ish? and that will take us into 2026.

I’m considering starting on my Arthurian prequel to The Môrdreigiau Chronicles but as we’ve just learned, I can’t write three serials at the same time. I’m not quite sure how that will work, especially as book four, A Soul for the World, will need a lot of attention as I weave all the threads together.

But maybe Hiraeth will have wrapped for real by then and my Arthurian novel can be the second serial I work on and potentially concurrently release. Or maybe the Obsidian and Flame characters will have an opinion on that.

Yeah, they definitely will.

YouTube

I am hoping to get back into my YouTube channel again. I’m hoping I can create writing-related video posts here on Substack (my newsletter host) and they’ll magically get to YouTube). There won’t be very many of them because you know, I want to write and editing takes forever. I will add links to my videos in my monthly digest, just in case I cover something like … oh stationery, dollhouses, and journals, that you might also like to see.

Art

Making art is necessary for me to process *handwaves* everything. I’ve a painting to finish, a dollhouse to finish and populate. A Sword for Wellington is going to need its own lap book compendium as it will be compiled of at least three sources (so far). I also want to illustrate more scenes from The Môrdreigiau Chronicles, such as that last moment in A Grail for Eidothea, a summer solstice scene or three from A River Trembles, and so on.

One Change I Plan To Make

Where to steal extra time for all of this? I listened to a podcast recently that talked about screen addiction and got a big a-ha from it.

Is the "Attention Economy" Curtailing Your Creativity, Writers?

If you asked me when I get story ideas, I would tell you they come when I’m walking, driving anywhere (as a passenger), train trips with no cell service, when I’m about to fall asleep¹.

They are all times when my head isn’t bent toward a screen.

Now, I’m not giving up my K-Drama (and C-Drama) obsession for anything, but I am typing this up after we’re done watching TV for the night which is when I usually switch to my iPad and watch YouTube videos, play Fishdom, or scroll through Notes, Facebook or Instagram.

This year might be the year I finally cut the cord with Instagram. I haven’t posted anything there since September 2024. Nobody’s complained — although I still do share funny reels to my Stories. Probably time to segue from consuming content there to … not at all.

For Facebook, my goal is to prune my friends list and the groups I belong to. There are some very helpful miniatures/dollhouse groups I belong to, for example, as I I am a newbie to dollhouse building, but there’s also other groups that I don’t really participate in and there are people I don’t need to keep track of any more.

Apple’s limits are not working for Fishdom, although I am playing on it less because I’m realising this … the less time I play the game, the more time I have to write.

And this girl has a whole lot of writing to do. Can I write my way out of being glued to social media?

I am.

What do you do to stop the dopamine scroll? Let me know in the comments!

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1. I, umm, actually start rehearsing planning the scene I want to write the next day before I fall asleep. Sometimes this does not help me to sleep.