I was cleaning through old computer files when I came across these two photos, 10 years apart. The 2015 photo is from my very first Barnes & Noble author event and the first time anyone ever asked me to sign a copy of my book. It was wild. What does one even write when autographing a book. And since I use a pen name, I couldn’t even get my own (new) signature right. The 2025 photo just happens to be a similar snapshot of me signing books, which I thought made for a nice “then and now” side by side. Like, holy cow, I’ve been doing this for 10+ years.

This is going to be a ruminating, reflective sequel to an old post I wrote right after finishing I Ching, The Oracle: “Author’s Thoughts After Three Books.” Reading that before this post will provide background context. For anyone interested in yet another layer of subtext, there’s this old video and companion write-up: “To the New Pagan Author.”

I do confess to not having the best experience with publishing Book #3, and honestly I don’t think anyone is at fault. The last time I had gone through the publishing process was 2015 and 2016 (actually, beginning 2012…it took that long to get the gargantuan book Holistic Tarot out to market). The editing and book design process, role of editors, all of it had somehow changed a lot between 2015 and 2023. So I was going through the process in 2022 with a 2012 mindset and assumptions. Ooh, okay yeah, I guess someone was at fault: Me.

Random funny aside on memory: I can easily remember the publication year for Holistic Tarot and The Tao of Craft. 2015 and 2016 respectively. But the book of most recent memory, I Ching, The Oracle, I always struggle with recall of exact publication year. Was it 2022, 2023, or 2024? Strange. I wonder what that signifies.

After Book #3, because it left me discombobulated, and especially with the world as we know it changing at the rapid pace it’s been evolving as of late, I seriously questioned whether publishing books was the optimal format for sharing what it is I want to share. If I were to undergo the process of publishing a Book #4, what would be the purpose of it?

If the purpose is educational on the niche subjects that are my specialty, well, people these days are learning via short-form video content, not 700-page unwieldy books. Do books even matter for educational purposes the way they once did? I dunno. I suspect theoretically it makes us feel good to believe they still matter, but realistically, to learn the Thing, these days people are heading over to YouTube.

I thought long-form video/multi-media content was the way for me to go, which is what you see over on my YouTube channel—copiously researched, primary or canonical source based educational content specifically for occult practitioners and those with an interest in East Asian mysticism and folk magic. I still have tarot video content I want to create, but my reasoning for devoting more time to Eastern esoterica is the lack of native practitioner-centered perspectives. Whereas in the tarot space, anything I can think of that I’d want to make a video on, easy access to that information and knowledge, eloquently put, is already out there. So, like, what’s my value-add.

And so if the purpose is to provide educational content on niche subjects, then do I just create a series of YouTube videos on the subject instead of writing and publishing a book on it?

Then there’s this whole New World Order AI situation. All three of my past books were done and dusted before AI became a Thing (thank gawd). Now, veteran authors pre-AI have to compete with new authors augmented by AI. And as an aging woman there’s a parallel experience I would compare this to. Here me out… !!!

It feels a bit like being someone who has never gotten any cosmetic “work” done, getting compared to peers who have had lots of “work” done, but nobody’s being transparent about the “work” they’ve gotten done, so you just end up feeling defeatist. You can’t help the frustration when you’re at the gym struggling with those weights trying to ward off the body fat accumulation that aging naturally puts on your belly while everybody else is micro-dosing with GLP-1s, or being horrified by all that sagging you see in your mirror reflection while the majority of people you know are going under knife and needle to get that all tightened up. And not that it’s relevant, but in case you’re curious, I have never gotten any work done, no knife, needle, or even prescription pills, I don’t even get facials, no Korean skincare regimen for me, nada. Hell, most of the stuff I put on my face is homemade. Makeup of choice? Drugstore brands. Though, sigh, it’s starting to show. So it’s not like I even have to declare it.

That said, the au naturale one’s response shouldn’t be to condemn the ones who opt for augmentation. Me adhering to my own self-imposed values and principles that has the consequence of it being a setback doesn’t mean the solution is to tear other people down. But also, because I am only human, how do you help yourself from playing the comparison game, which then results in you feeling defeatist.

Which brings us to brainstorming for Book #4.

Those who have been tracking my journey for years now know that I have had this 1,200+ page astrology encyclopedia-ish manuscript on the back burner since 2016. It’s 1,200+ pages because I managed to write out entries for all the traditional and modern planetary bodies, key personal sensitive points, and Arabic Parts for every house and sign, and the meaning of the main angular aspects. It’s been something I’m rather proud of… until the dawn of AI, and now this book I painstakingly, tediously wrote can be generated by AI in 30 seconds. Granted, hopefully, my human-written version is far better, but is it really? Which is to say this New World Order AI situation makes me feel like I don’t even want to bother publishing that encyclopedic astrology book.

I also have half-baked manuscripts on that back burner for feng shui (that’s been an open work-in-progress since 2012) and one for BaZi (Saju, or Four Pillars of Destiny) where most of the meat and bones of these books are already done, but need to be structured into a coherent book format, could benefit from some serious copyediting, and are missing opening and closing chapters.

But then I wonder…do I want to produce that material in the form of traditionally published books? Or would they make more sense as online course offerings? What would be my purpose for authoring published books on those subjects? What would be my purpose for presenting them as course offerings instead?

And if we’re talking about “dream books” I want to author, one is nonfiction in the same ballpark of my past work, and one is to write that proverbial All-American Novel. Before ending up in law school, what I had wanted to pursue was an MFA in creative writing, to write Asian American literary fiction. A tarot primer being my debut book was never on my lifetime Bingo card.

When I was working on Holistic Tarot, I intentionally embedded details that would relate to an epic historical novel I started to write around that time, a novel that would have tarot elements. Because I thought, how clever would it be once people saw how they cross-referenced each other. I finished a complete first draft of that novel around 2020 and I have a couple of old blog posts documenting that journey, here and here. I think that novel was too ambitious, trying to do way too much and without focus. I lost steam for it, and then pivoted to create and illustrate the full-color SKT III: Revelation. Even with my Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, I embedded details in the art that could potentially be “easter eggs” to that novel, but again, the novel never happened. Sigh.

As for the nonfiction ballpark one, I don’t quite know how to tee it up to explain to you what it is, but basically, I want to write a book-length letter that reads like an elder guiding the younger through learning the Craft. It’s me envisioning a teenager by my side who I train, from zero to proficiency, in the living cultural traditions I was born and raised in. Unlike any of the three previous books I published, this would be one you have to read in page order, because the subsequent section would necessarily build upon the previous section. It’s me trying to replicate, in book form, one-on-one mentorship, so that I might be there next to the reader in spirit, but a fully engaged spirit actively monitoring you to make sure you’re on the track of becoming the best version of yourself. The book itself would have to be magical, consecrated, one generation’s blessing passed on to the next generation.

Now, one thing I quite like about this nonfiction book idea is that I don’t think it can be replicated by AI. Because it needs to feel like a human to human one-on-one apprenticeship, me in spirit right there by your side. So, magically mystically speaking, if you will, how do I, like, I dunno, invoke me in spirit to be there when I’m invoked in spirit, while I’m still fully fleshed and living, to somehow hold residence on some astral realm beyond space-time so I can traverse to any point of space-time needed of me? Here’s a book project where I know for sure what my purpose is, but it’s so daunting of a purpose that I don’t even know where to start in terms of effort to achieve it.

There’s also a whole lot more to the premise than I’m sharing here at this point, and I wonder whether now is even the right time for me to be taking on such an endeavor, or whether this is an undertaking to defer for a little bit further down in time.

And so if this nonfiction ballpark “dream book” isn’t to be Book #4, what is? Or maybe there isn’t a reason to be working on a Book #4 right now?

I do still have the Etteilla deck to finish. 2026 is more than half over and I haven’t done even one single card from that deck this year. Not even one. Serves me right for ending on the Ten of Swords in 2025 though. Should have thought that one through. For someone who claims to be a diviner, I sure do lack foresight.