I’m done!
5 notebooks, 59134 words, and 2.5 years.
I've finished the first draft of June and the Star, a project I started in summer of 2023. It's taken far longer than expected, but if I'm being honest, I feel sad that the story is over. There's still plenty of work ahead: editing, illustrating, refining. But the broad strokes, the plot developments, the character arcs are complete.
June is a quiet kid who retreated into books and couldn't crack the code of how to belong, which is how I felt as a child. Watching her grow into herself over the course of this story has therefore been especially meaningful to me. The confidence she finds by the end of her story came to me slowly, over years of adulthood. I feel happy for her that she finds her voice, and a little sad that her journey (for now) is done.
However, I am very grateful and excited to see what lies ahead.
Here's my plan for the next few months:
Implement outstanding advice from a professional reader.
Gather feedback from beta readers.
Hire an editor (recommendations welcome!).
Complete 5–10 more illustrations.
Self-publish an e-book and print version.
Market the hell out of it.
On that note, if you would be willing to be a beta reader, please do let me know. You can reply to a newsletter email if you're a subscriber, or contact me through this form. Your feedback would be invaluable in helping understand the book's strengths and weaknesses, finding potential points of confusion, and shaping it into the best version of itself.
My dreams for this is that it is read. And for that to happen, it will need to be as good as I can possibly manage to make it.