Today is the day. Book five of my Grimoire Detective series comes out today! Blood Bound. Here is a small excerpt from chapter one to get you started. The saber came down toward my head. My reflexes brought up the falchion to block. The clanging of two swords rang out as the saber was drawn away and came in for another attack, this time for my left side.

Anthology 2: Of Grief and Renewal: (Short Story Anthologies Book 2) [Rose, Mychaila A.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Anthology 2: Of Grief and Renewal: (Short Story Anthologies Book 2)

It’s the end of the month so once again, it is time for the State of the Pulp. This is my monthly round up of words written and my progress report on my current projects. For the month of September, I wrote a little bit north of 44,000 words. While this is not my typical goal of 50 K in a month, it is still a decent number for the work I have been focused on for September.

As my birthday approaches next week, I want to talk about aging, and getting older as a writer. I see quite a few people online who worry about not having finished their first books yet, but there writers are in their 20s still. So, when you start to think that life is moving too fast for you and you will never publish, I’m here to quell that internal struggle.

I started ‘Walking to Mordor’ last year. I begin my journey the same day of the calendar that Sam and Frodo did - September 23rd, the day after Frodo and Bilbo’s birthday. Now, in the books, Sam and Frodo reached Mount Doom on March 25th, but they also did not have to work eight-hour days in IT and other life things, did they?

It is officially 2 weeks until the release of book five of The Grimoire Detective series: Blood Bound. On 4 October, this book will be available for purchase and it will mark 365 days since the beginning of this journey with the release of my first ever novel published: Midnight Call, on October 5th 2025. I also love this novel because the transition of the cover concept is becoming clearer (I hope) leading through to the end of this series at book seven.

Most writers know about the two types of writers: The Plotter and the Pantser. They have also been call the Architect and the Gardener, but I am not a huge fan of those descriptors. What I am a fan of though, is that mid-point role as a writer between a Plotter and a Pantser, lovingly known as a Plantser. When I first started writing, I had no idea what I was doing.

A question that often hits writers when they start a story is the layers of self-doubt. Is this story original enough? Is this idea good enough? Will readers like this story? All of these questions and others really boil down to one simple concept. The story that we are trying to tell the world really boils down to the question of ‘Am I Qualified’ to tell this story?

I was reading this book earlier this week and I ended up dropped the book at the 20% mark. Why? Because the author broke their promise to me and that was the Promise of their Premise. The phrase ‘Never Judge a Book by it’s Cover’ is obviously something that we absolutely do when reading a book. The cover lures us in to read the blurb or open the pages.

It’s the final day of August, which means that it is time to look back at the month and see what all I got written, what I got figured out, and what I got finished. Welcome to the State of the Pulp. I am on vacation this week from my normal day job. This is a chance for me to try to unwind, recharge, and recenter my focus on the project that I have been meaning to focus on for a few months now.

One of the tools I have used as a growing writer is learning how to read like a writer. It is one of those things that I feel like is the strong cornerstone of writing - reading. If you are a writer and you don’t read books, then you are already going to struggle with wordsmithing, because you have no idea what has come before, so how will you know what still has yet to come?

When starting out writing a story, a new writer often asks, “What are the parts of a story?”, to which the ‘experienced’ writer tells them, “A beginning, a middle, and an end.” But that is not very helpful, is it? I came across a better way to describe this same response so that it is less frustrating and more visual.

One of the most common phrases I heard when I started writing was ‘write what you know’. But what happens when you need something that you don’t know? A place you’ve never been before? A food you’ve never eaten? A language you’ve never spoken? That’s when we have to go into our research mode. I want to make one thing very clear up front about researching your writing.

I hate Artificer Intelligence. But when I say that, I mean the Generative AI and the Language Learning Models. I don’t mean the small automatic things like Spell Check or Predictive Text. I mean the monster that is growing and becoming more evil as it evolves. And before, I used to say that AI was ruining writing. Recently, that has become literal.

This week comes to the moment in my life that was pivotal in my becoming an author and a writer. It was my senior year of high school, and I decided to take Creative Writing as an elective. I thought is would be an easy ‘A’, which it was for me, but it was so much more too. My senior year of high school, I only had three required classes that I had to take.

It’s once again the end of the month, which means that it is time for my word count round up and figuring out how much writing I did in the month of July. Monday through Friday of this month was spent editing my fifth book in the Grimoire Detective seires; Blood Bound; for publication in October. It still sounds so far away, but it’s the first Sunday of October, so I don’t count that month.

Continuing with the history of my journey as to how and why I became a writer, this week’s post picks up at a pivotal time in my life in high school. This time in my life is what I would label as my ‘poetry years’. High school had three important moments, all around the same time for me, which led to me writing and wanting to write beyond the required pages of school.

Everyone has an origin story. With the past two decades of superhero films, the writers have all been giving us origin story after origin story. The truth of it is, though - even a writer has their own version of an origin story. That moment that guided them into becoming a writer. Here’s mine. I have always been a fast test taker.

In the modern age of writing, there are theories of how to get the best version of your story. There is the ‘zero draft’ or ‘vomit draft’ to just get the story done. Then you go through and touch that draft up. Then you re-write the entire story from scratch in a new draft now that you know how it ends.

This week’s post I would like to talk about your character’s agency in your story. While your main character is the person who Does the Things and Solves the Crimes or Defeats the Villain, that is just What they Do. The agency is Why they do It. And that sometimes gets lost or forgotten in the story writing process. See, Agency is all about the choices that your characters make, and I don’t just mean your protagonist.

Amazon.com: Fallen Guardian (The Grimoire Detective Book 4) eBook : Bowen, Cal: Kindle Store

It’s that time once again to finish up the month with the State of the Pulp. My weekly round-up of things I worked on, word counts for the month, and whatever else is news for this month. Starting off, this Sunday, July 5th, sees the release of The Grimoire Detective: Fallen Guardian. This novel has been prepped and ready to go for a while now, and I am excited for its release.

I had a few friends messaging me the past few weeks with their own writing struggles. Meanwhile, I have faced an obstacle myself along the way, so I thought I would talk about different problems writers face in their journey to create their stories. One obstacle that has plagued many a writer, including myself, is which project to work on. While I support writers working on more than one project to prevent burnout, I also know that too many projects means that writers wonder ‘Which One Should I Work On’?