New Growth Show: Topics covered

• • 00:00 — Navigating the weird world of marketing in 2025

• • 02:59 — The Journey of EMW: From Marketing to Fantasy Writing

• • 06:03 — Building a Community: The Importance of Beta Readers

• • 09:03 — The Role of Subject Matter Experts in Storytelling

• • 11:50 — The Power of Feedback and Sensitivity Reading

• • 14:57 — Marketing Strategies for Indie Authors

• • 17:52 — The Impact of Online Communities on Writing

• • 21:01 — Fan Fiction and the Evolution of Writing Perspectives

• • 23:50 — The Role of AI in Creative Work

• • 26:56 — Future Projects and Marketing Innovations

• • 29:56 — Closing Thoughts and Community Engagement

• • LinkedIn: Jess Joyce, Tiffany Da Silva

• • Jess’ website, Tiffany’s website

• • Youtube: New Growth Show

• • Instagram: New Growth Show

The post I’m on the New Growth Show! appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

Thanks to @cbcradiocanada for inviting me to be a guest on last Sunday’s episode of Cross-Country Checkup (which aired November 30, 2025).

Show host Ian Hanomansing was away, so I spoke with Rebecca Sandbergen.

Listen to Cross-Country Checkup’s transit episode. I’m the first interview at the 2:25 mark.

The episode focused on a recent original investigative CBC report. They found transit violence is on the rise, particularly in cities like Toronto, Edmonton, Montreal and Winnipeg.

The numbers square with my experience.

My long history with the TTC

I’ve ridden the TTC all my life. I remember sitting in the front and back cars as a kid to watch the track. It was always exciting to sit in the big window (so many people kindly offered us seats).

In my 30s, I wrote three drafts of Chaos Calling and Chaos Armor, Books I and II of my fantasy action series, The Xenthian Cycle. The series is set partially in Toronto and features a scene on the TTC (Chapter 18 of Chaos Calling).

I used my phone to write chapters during my commute, usually when leaning against the side door with my headphones on.

You could say with confidence that the subway doors are one of the most productive work spaces I’ve ever had.

More about my TTC writing origin story.

But the mood on transit has changed in recent years. There’s more agitation. There’s more distress. And there’s unfortunately a lot more violence.

In August 2024, I was assaulted at my local station. It wasn’t a serious incident (thankfully!), but it reinforced that the post-Covid vibe is different for regular riders.

Will I keep riding transit?

All the same, transit remains a key part of my life in Toronto. It’s often faster than driving, it’s definitely cheaper and most of the time, I feel perfectly safe.

I support programs to enhance that safety, and Mayor Olivia Chow is moving us in that direction.

Where to watch / listen

There’s a TV version of the interview floating around but I’m not sure where to find that. You can listen to the radio version on the CBC Cross-Country Checkup page on Apple podcasts (Nov 30: “Violence on Transit? How to stay safe!”) or Spotify.

Thanks to the Cross-Country Checkup team and producer Chiara Greco for having me on.

The post I was a guest on CBC’s Cross-Country Checkup appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

I’d seen Gilbert’s Tedx talks about creativity and working through her phenomenal writing success after Eat, Pray, Love. When I learned she was publishing a non-fiction book about living with creativity, I devoured it in print and audio.

That first read was a revelation. I admired the way Gilbert punctures the fallacy that living an artistic life means suffering. “If the art legitimates cruelty, the art may not be worth having,” she writes.

Her approach to creative living is decidedly anti-elitist. I’ve written about how Big Magic encouraged me to cast off my outdated, ignorant opinions about fan fiction. It also cemented my conviction that self-publishing was absolutely the right choice for me.

I read it again before I launched Chaos Calling, certain that I understood what Gilbert meant when she wrote, “The outcome does not and cannot matter.”

Spoiler alert: I had no fucking idea.

I’ve talked about how challenging it is to write a series, particularly as an indie. It’s time-consuming and expensive.

My newsletter subscribers also know that editing Chaos Armor’s fourth draft has taken longer than I’d planned. I wanted to publish it in 2025. That deadline has slipped. To be kinder to myself, I won’t name another date until I can meet that promise with certainty.

Immediately after sharing that delay, I received devastating news.

My book is among the millions of texts first pirated by LibGen and then stolen by Meta and other unethical tech companies to train their AI engines.

When pirates aren’t cool, just gross

I work in tech. Toronto is a well-regarded hotbed for AI research (e.g., Geoff Hinton). Tech investment is soft right now. Guess what’s still getting funding? AI projects.

Over the last five years, I’ve also listened to my peers and friends get increasingly enthusiastic about the various chatbot tools. As with environmentalism, DEI concerns, or flagrant violations of human rights, speaking up about the ethical quagmires AI presents may threaten your livelihood in tangible ways.

Many job descriptions in tech require fluency with AI skills, processes, and prompting. Recruiters want to know you can use it appropriately.

I’d been watching all of these trends with a mix of interest and skepticism.

But it’s one thing to suspect a technology billionaires are pirating books to feed their data-ravenous algorithms. It’s another to know that your work is among them.

When I read Alex Reisner’s article, “The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem” in The Atlantic and found Chaos Calling in the searchable database, my stomach lurched the same way it does in a fast-moving elevator.

Who do the other 121 results belong to? An academic who also publishes as E. M. Williams. Pirates have also stolen her published papers. The LibGen dataset includes millions of academic and non-fiction publications, along with novels, short stories and poetry collections.

Nearly every writer you can think of has likely had their works pirated by LibGen, a decentralized system that reminds me of the early days of Napster and KaZaA. LibGen includes original works, translations, and audiobooks recorded by equally talented voice artists.

Meta then scraped that pirated archive to train its engines because it didn’t want to pay market cost for acquiring data.

Elizabeth Gilbert (117 records) is also among the thousands of affected writers, academics and voice artists. Like her, many writers have lost the work of their entire careers.

What kills big magic? Despair

Without a publishing house or agent to commiserate with, I spent the next few weeks in a fog.

Writing felt impossible. What was the point? Why was I living my life on hard mode? Why should I bust my ass (and wallet) to write and publish another book when some combination of pirates and tech autocrats were going to steal my work the second I hit ‘upload’?

Worse, when I talked about what had happened, colleagues were sympathetic to a point, but it’s clear no one thinks the open exploitation of creative people means we should put AI back in the box.

Part of me understands. AI is the big trend. The hiring market is already precarious. No one wants to be left behind.

On another level, the whole thing made me want to lie down and never get up.

“Fear gets boring after a while”

In March, my book club picked Big Magic as our monthly read. I snagged the audiobook from Toronto Public Library. While I listened, I asked myself what Liz Gilbert would say about my piracy/theft situation.

No one was worried about AI when Big Magic was published. Gilbert does, however, write at length about, “me, creativity, and fear, advancing once more into the wide, terrifying terrain of UNKNOWN OUTCOME” [capitals mine]. After all, she says, “Uncertainty is what we sign up for.”

No kidding, Liz.

I kept coming back to these and other lines, which so accurately capture the hardest parts of pursuing a creative project. To write is to wrestle with uncertainty all the time.

But I’ve also experienced indescribable joy when an idea blooms in my mind like a flower, and bubbles of delight when a reader tells me how much my work means to them. Over the last three years, I’ve had so many of these moments. Am I prepared to never have those experiences again? That’s a far steeper price to pay.

When I launched Chaos Calling, I also had no data to temper my wild, first-time novelist ambitions. In 2025, I know better.

Sure, I’ve had sales reports with weeks and weeks of nothing. I’ve got scores of TikTok videos and other social posts that flopped. It’s hard to psych yourself up to run through another wall when you’ve still got bruises on your face and a bum knee from your last attempt.

At the same time, writing Into the Fishpond showed me that you literally cannot see the shape of your story’s success or the following it may amass until you’re at least seventy-five percent of the way through.

Chaos Calling is only twenty percent of The Xenthian Cycle. Until I publish Book IV or V, I truly won’t know what I’ve got.

As Gilbert writes:

“How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren’t going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your craft and how equipped you are for the challenges of creative living. [ . . .] “I am asking you to put aside your innocence for a moment, and to step into something far more bracing, and far more powerful:

There are no guarantees for anyone. Will you put forth your work anyhow?”

I know that I suffer when I’m not writing. Which means there’s only one viable answer.

The most bracing Big Magic

Every writer has an outside story we draw upon when asked to explain our inspiration. We also have an inside story—the personal motivations that drive our work.

When I’m outside my courage, it’s the inside story that keeps me going.

I remember sitting on a footstool in my kitchen at 1:30 a.m. one cold December night in 2015. Unbeknownst to me, I’d finished my second-last day of work on the first manuscript. I recall tipping my head back against the cabinets and staring at nothing, exhausted by and astounded at what I’d captured.

Later, I stood behind one of the swivel chairs in my living room, consumed by my story’s propulsive potential. This book has legs, I thought. This book can go the distance.

If I give up now, I’m turning my back on that younger and more courageous version of me.

If I give up now, the technocrats win.

And, as Liz Gilbert would no doubt remind me, nothing about writing has ever been certain.

Actions I’ve taken:

• I wrote an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asking for better policy to protect the work of Canadian artists. It’s posted on my work site.
• I finished a short story set in the world of The Xenthian Cycle. More details to come, but I hope to have it out soon.
• I’ve made Into the Fishpond visible only to registered AO3 members. Doing so adds another layer of protection from data scraping. The title page also includes a disclaimer stating my opposition to AI engines mining my work.
• Future editions of my book will explicitly call out AI scraping or training on the copyright page as something I do not consent to for any reason.
• I’m evaluating which digital platforms make sense for Book II’s release (I may also opt to sell it directly, who knows).
• I continue to work on Chaos Armor.

“Argue for your fears and you get to keep them,” Gilbert writes in Big Magic. “Fear gets boring after a while.”

Learning about the piracy and theft of my work definitely rekindled many of my writing fears.

It’s been true before and it will be true again—only way out is to keep moving.

The post Returning to Big Magic appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

From the outset of a new manuscript, I begin with a vision for what I want to achieve. Inevitably, as the draft gets longer, my ideas about what I’m doing shift.

Sometimes, it’s because:

• I’m building new skills to fully achieve my ambitions.
• My ideas about the story have irrevocably changed.
• My attempt failed.

That’s part of the journey and somewhat understood by people who don’t write.

Writers may not agree on much when it comes to the creative process, but we do seem to agree that writing a second book is always a different psychological experience than writing a first.

I think that’s partly because your idea about the kind of writer you’re going to be changes when your first book is out.

The moment you publish, you burn your dearly held dreams about who you might be in the fire of who you’re becoming. If you’re lucky and your book finds readers, that group’s feedback may also shift your perceptions (positively or negatively).

I’ve experienced a little of that. But after publishing Chaos Calling, I also experienced a deeper loss.

And that’s also something many writers navigate.

My recent chaotic loss: Richard Rudy

In August 2022, my family lost a stalwart, lifelong friend in Richard Rudy. Cancer claimed this wonderful person far too soon and with little warning.

Rick and I first met through the University of Waterloo’s Fencing Club. We shared an understanding of depression and mental health. He loved fantasy books (especially Dune, C. S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy and Wheel of Time), and was a staunch supporter of my creative work.

We stayed friends as we began our careers. He worked in graphic design and development, while I focused on communications and marketing.

Rick quietly orchestrated my first date with my husband (they’ve been friends since grade school). We later attended each other’s weddings and welcomed children into our families.

Over time, Rick and I collaborated on dozens of marketing projects. Working with him was fun and productive. We developed a short hand and an unbreakable trust. At his funeral, peers confirmed his talent for design and web development, and his willingness to pitch in during a crunch.

Most importantly, he was a devoted father, friend and husband.

A stalwart supporter

Rick took the black and white headshot of me that appears in my Tedx talk intro on YouTube. He built all my websites, including my first blog. I later lost it when payments on his servers failed before I could get into the back end and move the site.

His illness progressed so rapidly. By the time we realized how sick he was, making time for technical administration was out of the question.

In the final year of his life, Rick designed and built the first iteration of emwilliams.ca. His version was active from March 2022 to June 2023. He also delivered an eleventh-hour tweak to Chaos Calling‘s paperback cover, removing a smudge and somehow fixing a file error that had dogged the project without even knowing what he’d done.

If I had known how little time he had left, I don’t know if I could have asked for his help. But he was that kind of friend.

With hindsight, I also see how fearless he helped me be when pitching. With Rick in my corner, I knew he’d either work with me to solve my technical challenges or bail me out if I got overextended.

Beyond the milestones he lost with his family and friends, I deeply regret that Rick never read Chaos Calling. I can’t remember how much we discussed the story. Unlike many friends who volunteered to beta read, Rick wanted the polished version.

I trust that he’s at peace, and he knows how deeply we love and miss him.

Chaos Armor is dedicated to Rick’s memory.

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Writing a book series no one asked for may be one of the most massive creative commitments on Earth. And that’s especially true for indie authors. 

Collaborative art projects—film, television, theatre, etc.—strike me as equally bonkers in terms of their ambition. You get a lot of competing ideas about the final product. Sometimes the piece you worked on ends up on the cutting room floor. 

But writing is, by and large, done by solo creatives.  

And in the modern publishing space, books are increasingly published by sole creators, too.  

I started thinking about Anna Lin, Dave Montcalm, Jason Lin, the skyworms, and a bunch of characters you still haven’t met in Spring 2014.

This April, they’ll have been with me for a full decade of my life. 

It’s a long time to think about the same characters and their problems. 

For this reason, I have great sympathy for George R. R. Martin. He’s been thinking about Game of Thrones, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and all the rest since, oh, 1988. And probably longer. 

Because no matter how much I, as an admirer of Martin’s, want those last books to be done (especially after how the series ended, gah), I know he wants to be finished even more. 

Consider how tired he must be after more than 35 years on the same project. Thinking about my own work sometimes makes me want to take to my bed, and it’s only been a decade. 

Getting a fantasy series off of the ground is a heavy lift.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

Surprise! That first draft was a whole series 

In 2015, I finished the first draft of Chaos Calling. Little did I know, I’d written a whole series.

In the plot maps and journals from when I wrote the second draft of what became Chaos Calling and will one day be Chaos Armor, it’s clear that I thought I had a trilogy.

Roughly from 2016 to 2019, the story existed as one book–which seems like utter madness now! Past me estimated that I would be done, with all three books published, by 2025. Maybe 2026 at the latest. 

Great, I wrote back then, with zero awareness of my naivety. I’ll be in my 40s. Young enough to still travel easily and meet readers while taking the victory lap that may come from having a completed series. 

Well friends, it’s January 3, 2024. I’m in my 40s. Only one of my books—in what is most likely a five-book series—is out. 

On December 31, 2023, I finished Book II’s fourth draft.

In part, I’m posting to celebrate its existence for the first time as a fully-fleshed out, self-contained book. The manuscript now enters what I anticipate will be an 18-month production phase. That assumes its timeline will follow a similar path to what I experienced for Chaos Calling. I won’t really know until I finish. 

As I fix page numbers, I keep thinking back to that past self as she stands in the subway doors, furiously writing on her phone. And I think of her with so much love.

Because if she’d known the scope and magnitude of what she was tackling, she may have given up.

Writing a book series is not for the faint of heart.

Writing a Book Series in 2024

On average, self-published books sell 200 copies through the author’s personal network. 

Some of the most stunning data to come out of that wild Penguin vs Simon & Schuster lawsuit? Many traditionally published books also only sell a handful of copies.

We’re talking less than 12. 

I can proudly say that I beat both scales handily in my first year, and continued to challenge my sales numbers in Chaos Calling’s second year. If I’d based my success on those metrics, I may have viewed my project with more wisdom. I would definitely have saved myself a lot of grief. 

But I’m ambitious. It’s my nature. I wanted to sell 5,000 copies in one year and, long-term, a million copies of my series. 

I still do. And it hurts that there is no shortcut to that outcome.

I may never achieve that depth of readership. Or it may happen after I’m dead. After all, I wouldn’t be the first author that’s happened to.

Since starting this project, I’ve thought a lot about Jane Austen. She had no idea what her work would become when she died. She never saw a word of the critical success or a dime of the massive fortune her books continue to earn. 

That woman’s pen produced a billion-dollar, critically-acclaimed literary empire.

And when you consider how much the fear of poverty and homelessness runs like a wound through her books and letters . . . well, friends, that breaks my fucking heart. 

Calling a truce with my ego 

I chart the novel I’m working on using this wall.
As you can see, it’s beautifully blank right now.

When I started, writing a book series was never my goal. Yet, it’s where I landed.

Sometimes I want to write other books.  Sometimes it feels like The Xenthian Cycle will never be done.

Yet I remember looking at my Book II sticky wall in January 2023. Only four out of eight purple stickies for Jason’s chapters had checkmarks. Checking off every chapter in the book felt impossible. 

In total, I wrote over 107,0000 words this year. And Chaos Armor’s current draft is complete.

While I congratulate myself on achieving that goal, I am also working to accept that my books’ fate is entirely out of my hands. That’s a truth you’ll hear authors acknowledge, but there’s extra mind-fuckery involved when you’re also the publisher and marketing team. 

In my bones, I believe in The Xenthian Cycle. That belief keeps me coming back to write and market this story.

I’ll deliver it to the best of my ability. And only a small readership may ever care. 

I have to be okay with that, and make the art I make. 

~

Perhaps you’re reading this post on an idle Thursday. Maybe you’re writing a book series, too, or feeling the creative weight of your other dreams.

If you are, I feel for you. I have been in the dark place before, and I will be there again. We all get knocked down.

So get up with me, and let’s take the next step. I know that we can do it.

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