The Year I Wrote, and the Year I Was Written
After nearly a year of rewriting, the manuscript for Project Kairos Book 1 is officially done. The first installment of Kairos and Zera's epic saga, finished. 198,917 words--just a few hundred more than the word count of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for reference.
If this feels a little like déjà vu, it is. This is the third complete draft of Book 1, and something like the sixth iteration of a story that was conceived in late 2020. And the déjà vu gets even more déjà vuey. Just like last year when I finished the previous draft, I finished the day before leaving to visit Josh's parents in West Virginia. Another September. Another deadline that I thought I wasn't going to make, but somehow (not because I put in a bunch of extra hours of writing) the work fell into place, arranged itself, and delivered me to the very same point.
I'd be lying if it didn't feel like some form of providence. I do believe in coincidence, but not for this one. God's hand has been on every part of this journey, and so has his perfect timing. And it has taken every single one of those six iterations for this story to finally become what I've been trying to write all along.
This most recent iteration felt like a forge. For both the story, and for me. What I was doing in writing this story, God was doing in writing my life. Turning up the heat. Burning away impurities. Melting, forming, stress-testing. And pulling something out of the furnace that was more durable and cohesive than before.
As many of you already know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer last November, just four weeks into the rewrite of this sixth iteration. As a 38-year-old healthy woman with diagnosed hypochondriasis, this came as nothing less than devastation. I thank God for Josh, my mom, all my friends, family, and healthcare team who supported me through it. By Christmas, I was undergoing chemotherapy and on a path to surgery and radiation. The radiation just finished in August. I still have months of antibody infusions, but thank God those are nothing compared to the rest.
Needless to say, this has been the hardest year of my life. I could have shut the laptop and told myself that I was going to wait until I was through treatment to pick this story back up. After all, you need your best brain cells for this type of work, and chemo does a number on all that. But I didn't stop. I needed to be engaged in meaningful work more than ever. Besides, I couldn't stop. This story demanded to be written. And God sustained me through it all.
Not just sustained....refined. Distorted thinking patterns rose to the top as slag and were skimmed away (hypochondriasis, gone). New perspectives formed and sharpened. What used to occupy my brain as "important" simply doesn't anymore. And while my brain was taxed by treatment, I was even more so freed up for the work God has asked me to do.
I won't belabor the story of my cancer journey here. But it was key in producing the manuscript that exists today--a manuscript that seemed to write itself. So much of this draft felt as if I was uncovering something that was already there. I was just making the words visible on the page. What exactly that means, I don't know. I am not going to claim that this is a story God has written through me. This is not a prophecy, and it is certainly fallible. But I do believe God has called me to write and publish this story, and that he is making the way. The one who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. (1 Thessalonians 5:24)
Perhaps the thing that really made this manuscript blossom is this: realizing I wasn't just writing Epic Fantasy, but Epic Gracedark Fantasy--and finding the permission to lean into that. Gracedark became a compass that informed nearly every creative decision I made. The enemies that arose. What Kairos and Zera chose to do in response. How they failed, and how they sacrificed. What wounds were healed, and what became permanent. Without this compass, the manuscript would never have dared to render darkness honestly enough to give light the brilliance it deserves.
And so, having reached the end of a road I never could have imagined walking, I finish this phase of Project Kairos with the words Kairos himself speaks at its close:
"You have made it so."
-Jamie D. Atkinson
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What's Next For Project Kairos:
Right now: my review of the manuscript followed by content edit
November: manuscript to Gina, my professional editor (she'll have it for roughly 3 months)
While she has it:
I will reveal the book and series titles (I've been sitting on these for almost a year and can't WAIT to announce them 😁).
Series re-planning.
Share more here about Gracedark, the themes in Project Kairos, and the intersection of fiction and theology.
Projected publish date: sometime in 2027
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