Pip: C.J. Riley is building a resistance — and apparently, also a manga, a short fiction deal, an audiobook, and a novel sequel, all while holding down a day job. The signal stays alive.

Mara: That’s the territory today — a full transmission from C.J. Riley covering the sequel in progress, side projects gaining momentum, and the personal logistics of keeping a creative practice running. Let’s start with what’s at the center of it all: the novel.

Monthly Newsletter: Building Book Two

Pip: The newsletter frames this as a development update, but what it’s really doing is mapping the distance between a plan and a story that’s grown past its original edges — darker, more personal, and demanding more from its characters than the outline expected.

Mara: The post puts it plainly: “Book Two is darker and more personal for Mace. I’m especially excited to see the team dynamic grow more intimate and to let Mace and Lena’s relationship deepen. The biggest change between them is trust — whether that trust grows stronger or fractures is something I’ll leave for readers to discover on the page.”

Pip: So the structural question of the sequel isn’t plot — it’s whether two people can hold together under pressure. That’s a harder thing to draft than a battle scene.

Mara: ARC reader feedback pushed that focus further. The clearest note was to tighten the lens on Lena and Mace rather than distributing attention across the whole team, and that guidance opened a new plot direction for Lena’s arc. The post also flags Rayes as a surprise — without Mace’s older companion, she’s stepped into the team’s blunt, gruff voice and earned more page time than planned.

Pip: A character who grows by necessity rather than by design. Those tend to be the ones readers remember.

Mara: On the antagonist side, General Malrick and Mace share a history that hasn’t surfaced yet — and the post is clear it isn’t a family connection. The title reveal is targeted around Christmas, with an early spring 2027 release.

Pip: Twenty-one chapters planned, one-third drafted, and a one-hour daily writing block that happens regardless of what else the day throws at it. That’s the infrastructure holding all of this up.

Mara: The manga project gets a mention too — Chapter 1 finished with Graphene Cloud Services, Chapter 2 expected within weeks. And on the short fiction front, “The Cloths We Leave Behind” is live on Reedsy, and a new project with KSquare Magazine is underway alongside the already-accepted “1 Hour for a Lifetime.” The audiobook will be self-produced, with equipment funding currently in progress.

Pip: A lot of moving parts — and all of them pointing toward the same question the novel is asking: how much can you carry before something has to give?

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Mara: Trust as a structural question, characters demanding more space than planned, and a daily hour that holds the whole thing together.

Pip: Next time, we’ll see whether the signal stayed strong. It usually does.