October Update

October 10, 2026

What a busy couple of months! I wanted to share what I’ve been up to with my book, including a significant change.

First off, the good news: I received my first beta reader feedback. Everyone had nothing but positive things to say about my characters. To me, this is pretty much the biggest compliment that an author can receive, and I’m grateful that Evander’s journey resonated with people. I also learned a few areas where the book needed a little work. So I went through and added plenty of changes across the manuscript, producing what I’m considering to be the second draft.

I’ve also commissioned the book cover! I’d been very anxious about this for many months. It’s going to be the first impression that readers have of my book, and not only that but… it’s the biggest financial investment on my part. So I searched through a bunch of social media posts and profiles before finally making a decision that I’m feeling very good about.

Just a note: I believe it’s extremely important that authors partner with human artists. Real artists. Not an AI model. There are two main reasons.

1. Morally, it is wrong to be an author and be willing to replace a visual artist with AI slop. It should be obvious to anyone that publishing companies and scammers will attempt to use AI to replace authors! And all of the artwork you’d generate would be stolen!
2. For the above reason, there is significant backlash to AI-generated book covers. It’s just a bad business decision. It will convince prospective readers that you’re lazy and likely to use AI to generate text.

I don’t use AI in my writing, FWIW.

I could go on a whole rant, but much of what I have to say has already been said elsewhere. Don’t use AI for art of any form. It’s essentially outsourcing your creativity to an algorithm.

Lastly, I’m changing the title of my book.

The original title was actually Secondhand Magic. I wanted to write about a magic academy dropout who started a secondhand store for spellbooks. As the story evolved, it became about his unique take on simple, practical magic, and I renamed it to Second Chance Magic.

But I’ve since learned there are several fantasy books with this name already, and another one with a very similar title due to be released next year. And so…

I’m going with Homespun Magic.

homespun /hōm′spŭn″/ adjective. Simple and homely; unpretentious.

I’ll be back with more updates soon!