about the story of 'heavenly lies'

I didn't end up getting very far in the competition in the end, but after I had submitted it, I could not stop thinking about the reworked version of that scene-turned-short-story, mostly because I had subtly built-in hints of a larger world to the original short story. It was those hints I couldn't let go of, and before long, I was sitting down every morning for the better part of two years and fleshing that story out until it has become such an immersive world my brain is never fully disentangled from on a daily basis.

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Before I started working on Heavenly Blood, I hadn't been able to write for nearly 2 years. It was absolute hell, to go from writing non-stop since I was 10 years old, to a sudden dry spell - the ever-dreaded writer's block - that came out of nowhere, and lasted for years. In no small part was this because of my overall negative experience living in Japan for half of that time, and the previous half...well, general IRL problems never stopped popping up.

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When I finally rekindled that spark of writing beyond the block - in my case, the way I write has always been near-obsessive - it felt like a breath of fresh air. Or like I'd been hit with a gentle defibrillator that doesn't look quite as jarring as medical TV dramas make them look. It felt like I was normal again, like I was myself again, because finally I was writing again. Properly writing, not half-hearted editing I consistently kept forgetting to do until I just gave up all together, as had been the status quo up until that point.

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That being said, I didn't expect Heavenly Blood (and the series as a whole) to get quite as big as it has. By this I mean the worldbuilding. Good god did that hit me out of absolutely nowhere, and I wouldn't change a thing. As frustrating as it can be, I dearly love every bit of the experience - creating worlds, but also the languages spoken in them, and the physical looks shared across cultures (had to create that too), fashions and hairstyles, histories of warring demon gods.

I'm still in the process of doing all this, building upon all I already have by this point, and it fills me with excitement every time I think about how much there's still left to do and explore within the world I created in Heavenly Lies - the kicsin realm*.