from my notes app to you🌼💖🤘🏻

Hey, hi, hello. It’s Jinapher, and it’s been awhile. I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of my books lately, and I just wanted to let you into my headspace for a moment.

This creative journey has been both thrilling and exhausting, filled with some of the highest highs I’ve ever experienced as well as the lowest of lows.

There is so much I never anticipated (both good and bad) with this career that had merely started as a dream, a notebook, and a floppy disc at 9 years old. It’s two decades later. Two decades of dreaming, of pursuing, of learning and experimenting—finding myself within the fictional worlds I created—and now…things will be changing.

One of the biggest adjustments for me was a dream becoming a business/career. I always wanted to be a published author, and I latched onto that purely from the perspective of wanting to inspire and create. My first couple of years publishing, I struggled because I had a very difficult time putting my “business cap” on.

While I enjoy marketing and do actually enjoy business as well, there is this grueling aspect of turning joy into dollars that I hadn’t been prepared for. On top of that, I went in saying, “Yes, I want to grow,” in terms of following and readership without, again, not really knowing everything that comes with that territory.

Basically, I went in blind, living off quite literally nothing but my hopes and dreams. Reality, of course, came knocking when I couldn’t pay bills and I also couldn’t hold another job with the amount of free labor I was pouring into Wrathos and being an indie author.

I told myself, “Well, the idea of a starving artist is nothing new,” and in some ways I’d even been romanticizing that part of the process, which wasn’t healthy.

The longer I trekked along, the more my outlook on everything became quite jaded. I was bending over backward to produce work that I didn’t feel was reaching the right audiences; I was exhausted of constantly grinding while still having to measure my gas at the pump to the exact cent so I didn’t get an overdraft charge; and slowly but surely the overall joy of pursuing Wrathos just…left.

That was when I pivoted. I said: “Okay, clearly dreaming big isn’t enough so maybe I need to do what all the bigger authors are saying and start treating this like an actual business.” Despite the fact that filled me with this intense grief, I did it.

I took online courses, began developing a business plan for every new release, and locked in on my marketing. My royalties got better. I could finally pay my bills too. I was finally having beautiful readers like yourselves find me.

But it didn’t feel like a dream come true. It was HAPPENING. It was THE MOMENT. So why wasn’t I jumping for joy? I had my biggest release pending, nearly 2,000 preorders of pure “I did that” power, and could go buy a coffee without sobbing into it. Hell, I was even properly tracking expenses for taxes!

I was living the dream…but I wasn’t happy. If anything, that intense grief I felt when I first pivoted only magnified. I was mourning, and I didn’t understand that at the time, but I really was. Things were taking off, but the girl who dreamed big had been laid to rest, and I wasn’t handling it very well.

I kept smiling. I kept posting. I continued on because at the end of the day, I had bills to pay and no matter how I was feeling, providing for my family came first. I couldn’t allow myself to be selfish and “step back” or completely reinvent the wheel.

Even when I said publicly I was taking a break, that only meant that I was hunkering down and pumping out words. I didn’t know how to stop working anymore. The idea of just writing because I wanted to write was gone, and my passion turned into a deep rooted anxiety of, “Just keep going or you can’t pay your bills and you’ll disappoint everyone.”

I realize truly stepping back isn’t actually a selfish thing now, and that treating myself as a work horse only led to a natural decline in writing due to the stress and severe toll my mental health was taking, but that was just my line of thinking back then.

Now, I’ve barely posted to anything Wrathos in 2026, which I know some of you have noticed. Everything I said previously was a huge part of why, but I also had a death in my life that took me out of commission for a bit at the beginning of the year.

Then there was/is just the general stress and anxiety of what’s happening in the world, the inflation of costs, and my unfortunate lack of passion for the one thing I thought I could always rely on—writing.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my creative spark. I’ve been trying so hard to find it again, because it truly feels like I lost a piece of myself. All I’ve ever been in my life is a writer. I’m really not sure how to cope unless I’m dreaming up a new story.

So you’ll be seeing some changes soon. I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep, but I also didn’t want it to come as a shock if, for example, I decide to push the release of THE SHARD AND THE KRAKEN.

Just know I’m really grateful to every reader, author, and artist who has followed along my journey so far. Because I’ve been in a darker headspace, I’ve struggled to remember just how many incredible wins we’ve all had together since my debut in 2022.

Publishing is a longhaul journey. It means staying resilient no matter how volatile the industry gets. It’s tough out here right now, but you all make it worthwhile <3

also if you’re a fellow creative (or just in general) struggling mentally, financially, whatever it may be right now, I’m sending you all the good vibes and energy. I know this is all digital and we don’t actually know each other, but people need real, human-made art now more than ever. Please keep sharing your work, & I swear I’ll do my best to do the same.

Always,

Jinapher