2025 Third Quarter Writing Update

I can barely believe it’s already time for me to post my writing update for the third quarter of the year! If you’d like to read my first and second writing updates, click here and here! The stories which I have a single asterisk beside them are those which are referenced in my first post, and the one with two asterisks was mentioned in the second post. Therefore, I will not be going into an explanation of what they’re about. Instead, refer to the original posts for their descriptions.

Writing Update: July Through September

I’ve mostly focused on three stories:

• Nothing As It Seems: A YA Romantasy* 
• Faith Steadfast: A Christian YA Non-Magical Fantasy* 
• A currently unnamed story inspired by the Wars of the Roses and other Medieval people and events. **

As mentioned above, those with the asterisks beside them I will not be sharing too much concerning what they’re about since they’re explained in previous posts. I will be updating how the writing process is going along, however.

Nothing As It Seems

A prince with a reputation for killing his knights, and his bodyguard who may be working with the assassin out to kill him, have to join forces against a group targeting them both in a kingdom where nothing is as it seems.

I am so excited to announce that I am almost finished with the rough draft of Nothing As It Seems! I just recently finished the climax, and now am working on the resolution, wrapping up a few loose ends, and yet leaving some doors open for a possible sequel in the future. This quarter, I mostly worked on drafting, so my word count was about 15K words.

My plan is to let the rough draft rest for at least the rest of the year, and then go onto some edits and cuts I know I need to make. After that, I’ll be putting out some calls for beta readers, so keep an eye out for that post next year if this is something you’d be interested in!

If you’re not sure if this is something you’d be interested in, allow me to share my full blurb (still a work-in-progress, though) and the comparable titles (meaning if you like these, you’ll probably enjoy Nothing As It Seems).

The Blurb

Nothing matters more to Halynn Forrest than uncovering the identity of the man who murdered her father. Her only clue is the mysterious poison he used, the same poison which killed the late king and queen. By sneaking into the Royal Records, her secretive mentor assures her, she’ll find the answers. The catch? She’ll have to defy the odds—both as a commoner and a woman—and become a Royal Guard to the arrogant blabbermouth, Prince Andrias, to do it. 

Prince Andrias Montcroix lives a lie. Publicly, he’s the popular and hot-tempered troublemaker who can’t stand his brother Castiander, despite being heir to Castiander’s throne. Privately, he’s a disaster, distrusting of almost everyone and desperately searching to discover who the assassin who killed their parents is—and to stop him before he succeeds in murdering his beloved brother, too. After another failed assassination attempt on Castiander’s life, Andrias is convinced his newest guard is conspiring with the assassin to get them both killed. 

When one of Andrias’s leads turns out to be a trap, Halynn takes charge. In the middle of navigating enemy territory with fake identities and forced to work together, the two find the other skilled in tearing down their protective walls, getting under their skins—and into each others’s hearts. But the closer they come to unraveling the assassin’s identity and his motives, one thing becomes increasingly clear: the search which brought them together may be the very thing which tears them apart.

If this is intriguing to you and you think you might be interested in beta reading, I’d love to hear from you below! And definitely keep an eye out for that beta reading post coming out sometime next year!

Faith Steadfast

Thrust from luxury, family, and everything he’s known in one traumatic night, Brenton Rochefort, 6th Grand Duke of Kithage, finds himself hunted with only his father’s seal and the treacherous Herbert Langton’s wrath for identity. Forced to lower himself to the position of a common esquire and an assumed name, he struggles with adjusting to the inferior treatment while dealing with his personal grief and fighting to stay hidden–and alive.

This is most likely going to be my next WIP as I allow Nothing As It Seems to rest and when I want to work on drafting rather than editing. I’ve loved this story ever since its conception years ago–but never seriously got around to focusing on it until this year. That being said, I did write some of the opening chapters some time ago, which I worked on rewriting this quarter, and I also wrote a short side story with the characters, which may or may not end up in the actual story.

Honestly, I felt like I mostly focused on Nothing As It Seems and my other unnamed Wars of the Roses inspired story this quarter, but apparently I worked quite a bit on this novel as well, as I wrote about 18K words. I’m hoping this’ll increase in the next update, unless life and the holidays wreck my writing time completely.

Currently Unnamed Wars of the Roses Inspired Idea

In the second quarterly update, I explained my ideas and concepts for this story, which you can find there. Obviously this is a story of mine in its babyhood–I have no real blurb or pitch, nor really a set plot as of yet. I’m essentially playing around with characters and concepts, and writing little shorts to develop them. The Wars of the Roses are such a huge and complex group of historical events, there’s just a ton of potential there, and my issue is figuring out where to start, haha!

This is very much a fun on-the-side project to work on when I’m just wanting to write something for fun on the side or have already worked on one of the above two manuscripts. Sometimes it’s nice to have something to refresh my mind from my other two projects, and this one is that project for me.

From all the little bits and pieces of shorts I wrote here and there (some of which have become some of my favorite little snippets), I appear to have written around 21K words–which is honestly a LOT more than I expected! (I only figure out how many words I wrote per quarter when I sit down to write these posts so that is not an understatement, haha!) But hey–I have a duo of friends who I absolutely love writing, as well as a trio of brothers caught in an impossible political situation where one wrong move might cost them their lives–so I’ve had a lot of fun with this project!

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Total Quarterly Word Count: ~54,000

Average Words Written Per Month: ~18,000

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Well, that’s it for now! What have you accomplished in the third quarter of 2025? If you’re a writer, tell me what you’ve worked on! If you’re a reader, let me know what your favorite read of the third quarter was! God bless. ~ Kay Adelin