<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[C.J. Kael]]></title><description><![CDATA[Fantasy Realms by C.J. Kael]]></description><link>https://www.cjkael.com/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2026 18:58:39 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.cjkael.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[You Don’t Need Permission to Break a Writing Rule]]></title><description><![CDATA[There is no shortage of writing advice on the internet. If anything, there is far too much of it. You can spend an evening watching videos about how to improve your novel and emerge with a list of rules long enough to ensure you never write another word. You must show rather than tell, remove every unnecessary adjective, avoid prologues, begin with action, keep your chapters short, give every character an immediate goal and never use a word ending in “ly” unless you want somebody on Reddit to...]]></description><link>https://www.cjkael.com/post/you-don-t-need-permission-to-break-a-writing-rule</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ac9f002b89f0f638e3f0715</guid><pubDate>Sat, 10 Oct 2026 07:57:54 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b1956f_c267a18300714e698be5ad7a6559250d~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_855,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>C.J. Kael</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Does Every Fantasy Book Need a Map?]]></title><description><![CDATA[When I began building the world of Shadows Before the Dawn, the map was not a beautiful piece of fantasy artwork. It was a collection of shapes drawn on a whiteboard in a very small apartment in South Korea, where space was limited and apparently the most sensible use of one wall was to cover it with invented countries. At that stage, the map was there for me. I needed to know where the kingdoms were, how far characters had travelled and whether somebody could reasonably reach a city without...]]></description><link>https://www.cjkael.com/post/does-every-fantasy-book-need-a-map</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ab664f726fe68309c054147</guid><pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:11:36 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b1956f_41a238a44946438982d5d427ebf13d09~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_941,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>C.J. Kael</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Friends and Family Make Terrible Beta Readers]]></title><description><![CDATA[The people closest to you may love your book, but that does not always make them useful beta readers. Here is what writers actually need from early feedback.]]></description><link>https://www.cjkael.com/post/friends-and-family-make-terrible-beta-readers</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ab0e9c1405be491783d4167</guid><pubDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:31:13 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b1956f_2e3fa19eb4dd4c4eaa641c0341d9f630~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_941,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>C.J. Kael</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Stop Writing the Lore. Bring the Giant In.]]></title><description><![CDATA[Near the end of writing Shadows Before the Dawn, I reached a battle that should have felt enormous. It was one of those points in a fantasy novel where different stories begin to collide, the danger that has been gathering in the background finally becomes real, and the author (hi, that's me) is expected to deliver something that justifies the hundreds of pages it took to get there. The problem was that my battle felt fairly ordinary; I didn't want that, my readers wouldn't want that. There...]]></description><link>https://www.cjkael.com/post/stop-writing-the-lore-bring-the-giant-in</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6aabee46262dc4110845d89d</guid><pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2026 13:42:30 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b1956f_17cb20ff90094dd8b2e02612fa7a174a~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_941,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>C.J. Kael</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Writing a Book Is an Achievement. It Is Not a Marketing Strategy.]]></title><description><![CDATA[I spent more than eight years writing Shadows Before the Dawn. Not eight years of waking up every morning and diligently writing a thousand words, to be clear. There were periods when I wrote constantly, periods when I barely touched it, and several occasions when I went back to the opening chapters and wondered whether the only sensible option was to rewrite the entire book. Eventually, though, I finished it. The edits were complete, I had a cover, and after years of telling people I was...]]></description><link>https://www.cjkael.com/post/writing-a-book-is-an-achievement-it-is-not-a-marketing-strategy</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6aaba8913663585669c6f927</guid><pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2026 08:45:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b1956f_c94a80a124914586b08c768885f7f3f8~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_941,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>C.J. Kael</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>