Because of how quickly I was writing A Woman’s Conquest to get the base out— Which felt good, by the way, you’re allowed to hate your first drafts, just get them written! You can’t refine—be unhappy with—what you haven’t written. Back to my point: there’s a lot lacking in the manuscript. And so I need to refine the way that systems work and how characters interact with one another, because despite the fact that Tolly (Tolua Heleni Faelosi) lives in a palace—albeit it’s a shunned wing of the palace—Tolly really only talks to Nadi, Jada and Hikuna. I even forgot that she had a nanny at some point, and you can tell when I remembered her. I did make up an argument for why she doesn’t interact a lot with people, but there’s still not enough. Even if a lot of the “mob” characters aren’t important, they need a bit more substance to make the illusion a reality.

And so that’s what I’m writing at the moment.