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| One year of my writing journey. |
A year ago, I wasn't building a writing career. I wasn't even trying to. I simply reached a point where something in me stopped waiting.
Around late June 2025, I made a quiet decision—not dramatic, not carefully planned—just certain. I wanted to write.
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| The Mirror Room book cover. |
Five days later, The Mirror Room existed. Looking back now, that still feels surreal. Not because the novel is perfect—it isn't—but because of what it represents. It was instinct without hesitation. I wasn't thinking about publishing, marketing, or what it meant to call myself an author. I simply had a story that needed to exist.
Before then, I had already been living with stories in a different way. Through films. Through music. Through Cinema Odyssey. I spent countless hours wondering why certain scenes stayed with me long after they ended, why some characters felt more real than people I'd met, and why certain stories changed the way I looked at the world. Without realizing it, I was teaching myself how stories work before I ever wrote one. The Mirror Room became the moment I stopped observing stories and started creating them.
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| Cinema Odyssey: A place where it all started. |
And somewhere in that process, Emil Krauss appeared.
He wasn't designed to be a conventional antagonist. He doesn't manipulate through force or violence. He rarely needs to. What unsettles me about Emil is that he simply offers a different way of seeing the world and quietly lets people decide what to do with it. Looking back, I think he represented something I didn't fully understand at the time: the danger of clarity without compassion, of intelligence detached from humanity. He remains one of my favorite characters I've written because, even now, he still asks me questions I can't completely answer.
Then there was Leyla Lang.
She was never meant to be extraordinary. She wasn't written to overpower the story or become its loudest voice. She was written to endure—to question, to resist, and to keep searching for something human while everything around her slowly came apart. If Emil represents certainty taken too far, Leyla represents the courage to keep questioning. Somewhere between the two, The Mirror Room found its balance.
When I revisit that novel today, I don't just see my first book. I see the beginning of a conversation that I'm still having with myself. Over the past year, writing has changed the way I think. I don't simply imagine plots anymore. I think in themes, patterns, symbols, and long arcs. I see invisible connections between stories that once felt unrelated. Every new project teaches me something that quietly reshapes the next one. Most importantly, I've learned that characters don't disappear when a book ends. They stay. They change how you think. They challenge your assumptions. Sometimes they reveal parts of yourself you hadn't noticed before.
That's the greatest gift The Mirror Room gave me.
This anniversary isn't really about celebrating a book. It's about remembering the version of myself who didn't wait until he felt ready. The version who didn't know whether anyone would read his work. The version who didn't understand what it meant to be an author—and wrote anyway. I hope I never lose that part of myself. Because as writing becomes more structured, more intentional, and more ambitious, there's always the temptation to become overly careful. To polish away the instinct that made everything begin.
The Mirror Room reminds me not to. It reminds me that sometimes the most important thing a writer can do is begin before understanding everything.
One year later, that journey continues.
Two days from now, I'll release my second novel, The Mind of Zeus (now available on digital stores worldwide). It's a very different story, set in a completely different world, but it grows from the same fascination that started with The Mirror Room: exploring the human mind, its contradictions, its fears, and the choices that shape who we become.
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| The Mind of Zeus book cover. |
If you've been here since the beginning, thank you. Thank you for reading, for supporting my work, and for allowing these stories to exist beyond me. Here's to the first year. And to everything that comes next.