If you caught ​my last email​, you’ll know I’ve been squirreled up in my writing cave, powering through the final draft of The Magician & the Labyrinth of Yesterdays.

I had the goal of launching on Kickstarter by Samhain (the book is set in a haunted castle, so the vibes are on point). But apparently, that goal was conceived by a part of me with a radically different conception of linear time, word counts, and, broadly speaking, reality. ̄ \_(ツ)_/ ̄

When I calculated a finish line based on my revision speed over the past two weeks, the math spit out a date closer to mid-November.

As in, this is when I’ll be done with the final draft. Not the multiple proofreads. Not the book’s layout. Not the spine and back cover design. (That said, I’ve already designed the front cover, and I can’t waaaaaaait to show it to you!)

This would put my Kickstarter in the middle of holiday season madness, which isn’t a gamble I want to take. Not to mention, my tiny food business can get pretty bananas in Nov/Dec, so adding a crowdfunding campaign to the mix sounds, I don’t know…less than smart? 🤔

Okay, so the weird part wasn’t that I was disappointed about the upended timeline.

I mean, I’ve been diligently working on this book since April 2025. Mentally, I’d already moved into that October launch, unpacked my boxes, and started picking out the drapes—haunted-castle Halloween romance, let’s gooooo!

The weird part was what didn’t happen next.

Meet My Inner Bundozer

I’ve written a great deal about my inner part who’s perennially rushing around, its little knickers in a knot over everything that “should” have been done yesterday.

More than any other part in my system, I’ve worked with Busy Bunny the most. It’s a very old part, one that I learned, in large part, from watching my parent Busy-Bunny their way through life at an exhausting clip.

When I discovered that revisions were going to take a long ass time, I braced myself for Busy Bunny’s patented Five-Alarm Explosion Tornado™.

But…it didn’t happen.

Instead, I looked inward to find Busy Bunny blinking at me, little nose a’ twitching: What now, human?

An Astral Field Trip

Without Busy Bunny riding my ass into the sunset, I had the mental space to feel my disappointment without becoming immobilized by it.

And then…I headed to the astral. (As one does.)

Next door to my personal astral sanctuary, I’ve constructed a temple dedicated to my romance series. I wish I could take a screenshot of my brain, because there’s a very rad room that I suspect is modeled after a third-grade field trip to the planetarium.

The space is soaring and domed with a Milky Way midnight blue glow, and around the perimeter are twenty-two doors, one for each major arcana card, each leading into one of my books. 📖

To enter, I knock three times and wait for the symbol on the door to light up. And so…I entered the realm of The Magician & the Labyrinth of Yesterdays. The spirit of the book and my guides sat me down, and together, we hashed out a revised plan.

What I won’t be doing:

• Grinding my brain into a paste trying to get revisions done by Samhain, linear time be damned.
• Finishing revisions mid-November and launching my Kickstarter in the middle of the holiday rush, just to release the steam valve on Busy Bunny’s nervous energy.

What I will be doing instead:

• Continuing to work on revisions at a sane pace, likely finishing mid-November.
• Launching the Kickstarter in February. Instead of the Halloween theme I’d planned, I’m going with…wait for it…Gothic Valentine! 😍🖤
• Using the time in between to rest and draft a companion short story I’ve already outlined (and maybe start the next book, but I’m trying not to go bonkers here).

When in Doubt, Give Cry-Eating a Go

As soon as my eyelids fluttered open following my astral foray, I had the urge to draw a card from my Spirited Away deck.

The question: What energy would serve me best through the home stretch of this book?

Which card did I get?

If you’ve seen the movie, you might recognize this scene. Chihiro has snuck out of the bathhouse to meet Haku, who’s taken her to the pigpen to see her parents. Chihiro must remember what her parents look like in pig form in order to save them before they’re slaughtered.

As Haku leads her back to the bathhouse, Chihiro bursts into tears. Her work at the bathhouse is grueling, she has no idea how this wacky spirit world works and, oh yeah, her parents could get turned into bacon any day now.

Haku comforts her and gives her a snack, and in a move I can 100% relate to, Chihiro stuffs her face while sobbing. And it totally helps! (Duh.) Her weary expression settles into a grounded determination.

This isn’t a card delivering a saccharine “Chin up, kiddo! Everything will work out!” Chihiro has a lot of tub-scrubbing and floor-mopping ahead of her—and a great deal of uncertainty.

All she can do is put one foot in front of the other, powered by bouts of cry-eating.

Well, shit. Message received.

The assignment isn’t to pretend I’m not disappointed or that the workload has magically shrunk. It’s about taking care of myself well enough to keep doing it.

Putting Busy Bunny to Work

Spirited Away card in hand, I returned to my altar. Immediately, my crystal grid jumped out. Clearly, it was time to refresh it, using the card as a focal point. I chose new crystals and set up my intention, and thanks to my spirit guides’ suggestions, I did something a little different: I asked Busy Bunny to help.

Remember, Busy Bunny has a lot of energy:

When I let BB run the show, it’ll use this energy to fling us straight off the Cliffs of Burnout. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Energy is energy. Busy Bunny could just as easily help me stay on track with revisions, so that I actually finish them by mid-November. Otherwise, there’s a good chance Parkinson’s Law will rear its annoying head. This is the law that states: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Nope. I am not wrapping up revisions, midnight, February 13, nanoseconds before my Gothic Valentine launch, thankyouverymuch.

I shall channel my inner Chihiro, cry-eat as needed, and get shit done at a pace that bakes in plenty of time for self-care.

Next time, I’ll tell you what I noticed once Busy Bunny and I stopped bickering about how long the book is taking—something that completely changed how I view the past year of writing. ✍️

See you soon.