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If you're just joining us now, Welcome! Take a look at the previous posts at www.aetherguardian.com to catch up on the conversation! Let's dive into our final character, Diana. Don't worry, no spoilers here! One, What does Diana want? I think it's pretty clear from the story, that she wants to be number one. She's obviously extremely competitive and wants to be second-to-none. On top of that, she wants EVERYONE to know that she is number 1. Book 2 and 3 will share more abou

If you're just tuning in now to the newsletter, Remember to check out some of the previous posts at www.aetherguardian.com so you can stay up to date and so you know what's going on! Let's check out Lucy's character arc with the six main questions you should be asking about each character you write. One, What does she want? Just to let you know, book 2 is going to be exploring a lot more of the motivations and characters of both Lucy and Diana and their backstories. But you

Let's keep the ball rolling and dive into Lady Elise's character arc without major spoilers! If you're just tuning in now, check out www.aetherguardian.com on the blog page to stay up to date with all the recent posts! One, what does Lady Elise want? She wants to avoid past mistakes and guide the next generation to do the same. Perhaps avoiding mistakes is why she is such a perfectionist... Two, what does she need? Ha! What does every perfectionist need? To relax! I'm joking

2025 has been such an amazing ride. Starting all the way back in April, this project has been such a great learning experience. I want to thank you so much for your support. I cannot thank you enough for your engagement, feedback, and walking alongside me through this journey. You're awesome and I hope you have enjoyed not only Aether Guardian, but all of the other lil community content stuff. I hope that as we head into 2026, that you've found my journey to be an encouragem

Let's talk about Cecilia's character arc. Looking at those 6 questions from last week, I want to talk you through Cecilia's arc without any major spoilers. One, what does Cecilia want? From the first few chapters alone, she wants to prove that the people and the High Council are wrong about her. She wants people to see that she has worth and value despite what the city leaders say. She's going to show this by continuing her role as a Guard and proving to the whole city that s

My very first draft of Aether Guardian literally had zero character development. I completely forgot to add it to the story! I was so focused on the flashy battles and the training scenes that I forgot that people want to read about the characters themselves. Their wins and losses, their emotional struggles, inner tension with the plot and other characters, as well as how they grow throughout the story. Oops! Upon realizing I needed to fix this massive shortcoming, I spent ab

Here's the final pieces of advice as you publish your first book! If you did all your homework over the months leading up to your launch, then you should have a fairly solid foundation. If you've checked out any of the previous blogs, you can learn more about what my whole process has looked liked over the last several months. But the final leg of the publishing journey is mostly tuning and checking to make sure everything is in place for the launch AND the post launch. The l

A second step you should understand when self-publishing is making sure you have a game plan! I know you've heard me talk about this already, but it's super important. This whole process took me well over 8 months from "ok time to start looking for an editor" to "Launch day!" This doesn't even include all the time it took to actually write the book! So here's what I learned and some helpful tips as you start: Start with a budget and stick to it! It is not going to be crazy ex

Ironically enough, the publishing part of all of this was actually very simple and straight forward. Here are somethings I learned along the way that can help you! First, You need to pick how you're going to publish. I'm an indie author. I've got no previous experience, no other books published, and I'm doing everything on my own. So I self-published. All that means is that I'm on my own to take care of EVERYTHING. From finding an editor, cover artist, website, social media,

So I worked on it some more. A little on the edits here, got some social media stuff ready there. It was a lot of waiting and I felt like I was behind schedule. I knew I wasn't, but hey, I've never published a book before so I had no idea what was "standard" or "normal." But about 4 months before I had planned to launch, I got the next round of revisions back. I was super pumped and got to see these versions in color as well! #1 was an amalgamation of the previous #1 and #2.

I was super nervous about getting started with the cover art. After all, people DO judge a book by its cover. I had a million different anxieties about what could go wrong. Would this artist be the right fit? Could they capture what was in my head? What if I don't love their design? Was it going to cost me an arm and a leg? But I knew it needed to get done and I had to get it done soon. So using Reedsy again - love it by the way - I reached out to a few artists I liked and go

I want to take a little bit of time to talk about community engagement. If you're looking to connect with others, here are a few tips and trick's I've learned over the last few weeks that really helped me out. I hope these help you! The community you build over a common interest is such a cool thing to experience. Whether its over your passion project, a hobby or sport, or some niche group of people with a single shared experience, community helps build bridges into the lives

In addition to the actual edits for Aether Guardian, there was also something else I was working on as well. From building the website, social media pages, these very blogs and newsletters, to gathering ARC team feedback, and an overall general strategy, there was still a lot left to be done! You've all (hopefully) seen the website and social posts and have glanced through these blog posts, so I won't belabor what I've already talked about. Instead, I want to take the time to

Picking up from last week, I had some large shifts I needed to make to make this book cross the finish line. The first was World Building! There were several large holes that I had been blind to for a while. Now, several people who had pointed these out to me in the past had noticed them already - I just had no idea how to fix them! Without any spoilers beyond the free first chapter, a big issue was that Cecilia didn't have anyone close to her. She just kind of waltzes right

The editing process wasn't so much hard as it was time consuming. I had a great editor and I cannot thank him enough. Thank you George!...

For months I wanted to publish Aether Guardian - but for real this time. It had always been a pipe dream that I'd be able to do it one...

I was locked and loaded. I had the feedback, I had a reenergized direction, and it was finally time to seriously consider that this book...

The initial feedback I got was extremely insightful. Susan, you took the time to go page by page and help me filter out all the tiny...

The break I had between finishing the first draft, finding my first few jobs, and settling into a new rhythm was extremely helpful. No...

It was finally done. 6-7 total months to type up the whole first draft of Aether Guardian and it was finally done. But there were some...