A.J. Ayeni is the author of the dark academia fantasy series The Zaragoza Chronicles, including Beginnings and its forthcoming sequel, Brainwashed.
I published my debut novel, The Zaragoza Chronicles: Beginnings, in February 2021. That date was especially momentous to me because it marked the culmination of about four years of basically becoming a novelist—and all that that entails.
As I write this blog entry, it is August 2026, approximately five years and seven months since Beginnings was formally released. In that time, I’ve returned to the U.S. after living abroad in Europe and Asia for a while; stumbled my way into a career in UX research; founded a UX research department at a startup; got laid off at said startup due to, well, being a tech worker in the 2020s (oh, don’t worry, that part is coming); worked as a contractor at an even bigger tech company—rhymes with Hicroploft—in a role that involved Responsible AI; quit said job to “return to my research roots”; accepted a UX research role at a financial services company (big mistake); and quit that job, too.
Intertwined with all of that, I managed a long-distance relationship of five years.
Now, on this hotter-than-should-be-acceptable Sunday afternoon, I sit here in my backyard, three days out from completing the second draft of my second novel, The Zaragoza Chronicles: Brainwashed.
Whew! That was a mouthful.
Still with me? Awesome!
Suffice it to say, these past five years since the release of Beginnings have been a whirlwind, coupled with the macroeconomic changes we’ve seen since the advent of mass AI, along with all the other nasties that have been spewed out in conjunction with the rapid proliferation of AI in our day-to-day lives. Need I mention the increasing cost of anything that has a chip in it, or data centers that ruin neighborhoods not just physically, but health-wise, too?
But I digress!
This post isn’t supposed to be a doom-and-gloom story about what happened to the world if you were frozen in a block of ice in 2021, only to emerge in 2026. No, not at all.
Though all of the above is true, this post was always going to be about me, the future of my writing, and anything else that hasn’t made its way out of my gob and thus has to be released in the best way I know how: through writing.
My Writing
In between all of the massive life events that have occurred since the release of Beginnings, the one thing that has never left me is the urge to continue writing.
Though there were days, weeks, and even months when my fingers weren’t locked away creating something fantastical, my mind was still churning out ideas nonstop. During an unexpected tech layoff in 2024, I dedicated that time to expedite the drafting of my second novel, The Zaragoza Chronicles: Brainwashed. What was supposed to be a two-week-to-two-month break between the first and second drafts somehow became two years.
But again, like a lion that hadn’t eaten in days, the hunger gnawed at me.
It wasn’t the hunger for a fresh baby gazelle or an innocent elephant calf, but the hunger to write—the hunger to add to these tales I’ve been spinning for almost a decade now.
Between Beginnings, the two short stories that followed that debut (Femi & The Rival and Alfred’s Tales), and the lead-up to my second novel, I was neck-deep in trying to advance my “real career.”
You know, the one that’s baked into you since grade school. The one that tells you that upon completion of roughly 12 to 20 years of formal schooling, you’ll have amassed such an extraordinary knowledge base in your field of expertise, that you won’t have to worry about re-establishing yourself in any other field, as long as you work hard and stay diligent.
Well, AI put up a big fat digital middle finger to that idea.
While I was still living in Singapore, I had an innocuous conversation about what I would want to do if money weren’t an issue. That conversation kept replaying in my mind years after it happened.
My answer was obvious: become a full-time novelist.
But then there’s that part of your brain that tells you, That’s impractical. Stick to your real job. Becoming a novelist is a pipe dream.
And what sounds like good, practical advice starts to quiet down those other voices—the ones that run on creative juices.
I don’t mean to keep harping on the perils of AI, but ironically, those perils, alongside what AI was supposed to be—a way for us humans to focus on the things that fascinate us while machines do the monotonous, humdrum work they excel at—became a driving force behind me wanting to get back in the saddle and begin getting these novel ideas out of my head and onto paper.
Or screen.
It’s really funny because when I started the UX research gig at the financial services company, something told me it wasn’t the right call. Sure, on paper it sounded good, and it was more money than I had ever earned up until that point. Though that motivated me for maybe the first month or two, the novelty quickly wore off, and I was stuck with a realization:
Did I want to slog away at a job I didn’t really care for, working with people I didn’t give a shit about, making an already incredibly profitable company even more profit?
Well, if you’re reading this post, then the answer is already crystal clear.
No. It wasn’t something I wanted to do.
Somewhere along the line—getting the degrees, landing the interviews, excelling at the jobs—something awoke in me that said there was another way. This didn’t have to be my existence.
Don’t get me wrong. If I hadn’t stayed diligent and secured work that paid the bills, I wouldn’t even be in the financial position to write this blog post in my backyard, one month out from being a salaryman.
The starving writer is an ever-enduring trope, isn’t it?
Ha! I laugh about that now, but I do hope it doesn’t become tears later!
Long story short, I’m not writing this to tell people to drop whatever they’re pursuing because it was based on practicality, reason, or research. Do not quit your day jobs and pursue that passion project blindly.
However, if that passion project hums louder and louder in your mind’s ear, eventually becoming a roar that can’t be ignored any longer, perhaps that hum was really the bell to your life—ringing for you to wake up and claim your destiny.
I’m not sure if that’s what completing The Zaragoza Chronicles trilogy will be for me, or what will come of any of the future novels I’ve thought about.
All I know is that I think we’ve reached a point in history where not pursuing these dreams that gnaw at us at night could, for the first time in a long time, be more impractical than anything else.
In a world where machines increase their capabilities every second to replace us in the white-collar jobs we’ve spent over a third of our lives preparing for, what if that frees us to accomplish what we were put on this earth to do?
To create art and music. To sing and dance to our hearts’ content as we remember what it means to be human. Not just a human slogging away at some job you hate, but a functioning member of society charged with the spirit of life itself.
Should that be the future of our world, perhaps this moment of uncertainty and despair will have been worth it.
If this momentary forgetting of the things that truly make us who we are as a species is suddenly reversed, ushering in a new cultural renaissance of sorts, then of course it all would have been worth it.
If not, though…well, that would be truly unfortunate.
Nevertheless, I think I’m in a period of my life where I don’t want to play it small anymore. My desire to become a novelist, to chart out my own path on my own terms, has become a roar too loud to ignore.
If you feel the same way about something—anything!—I would implore you to give it a go.
At worst, you fail and pivot back to the thing that provided comfort anyway. I just pray that whatever that may be, your future in it is as secure as you think.
But conversely, if you dream that big, audacious dream, follow it as far and as well as you can, and then maybe—just maybe—you’ll succeed.
Then what?
Well, then you’ll be living in your dreams.
And wouldn’t that be worth its weight in gold and more?
I surely think so. 🙂
The Future
As for the future, my priority is completing The Zaragoza Chronicles trilogy as soon as humanly possible.
The third draft of Brainwashed will commence sometime next month, and this will be the draft where I’ll attempt to read the sophomore novel as a reader and not as the author. This allows me to review the pacing, character arcs, and how the tension escalates. It’s personally my favorite draft because it allows you to see the story you’ve crafted without all the muck and in-line sentence variations that my second drafts are known for.
Beyond that, I’ll be using the near future to promote Beginnings again, including the audiobook, which was narrated by yours truly! If you know me, then you know how much I detest marketing, but I have to get the word out somehow, right?!
Outside of the main trilogy, I have some short story ideas for the rest of the characters in my ragtag group of super-powered grad students. And outside of my writing, I’ll be using the rest of the summer to ideate on some side hustles that have been on my mind.
Stay tuned for more by following this blog—I promise to post more! Or, if you’d rather engage via social media, you can find me on Instagram, too.
Thanks for reading this far, you’re a real one!
Best,
A.J.
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