BLOG AND BOOKCLUB | Wesley Croft 1

Author Talks: A Behind-The-Scenes Look at Awoken Forest and the Writing Journey on Jess Knauss' After Hours Podcast!

Wesley Croft
Mar 11, 2025
6 min read

Storytelling is a powerful experience that connects us all. Recently, I had the pleasure and privelige of appearing on Jess Knauss's After Hours Podcast, where I shared the writing journey behind my debut novel, Awoken Forest. In this discussion, we explored the thrilling and often challenging writing process that gave life to Arbonar.

Join me as I take you through our engaging and hilarious conversation, highlighting the insights that emerged during the podcast.

Check out more on what Jess is doing with the podcast and more about her upoming debut novel at https://jessknaus.blog

Click Me

What book or book series could you re-read endlessly?

Oh wow, what a great and impossible question for me to answer. I have such an eclectic taste in genres and curiosity for the world. I kind of wish I had one of those old school volumes of encyclopedias, appropriately dusty that smells devine. I’m really into James SA Corey and old school Clive Cussler at the moment. But in all honesty it would probably be some epic fantasy like the Lord of The Rings series, Wheel of Time (which would take forever) or Harry Potter. I am a millennial afterall.

How did you come to writing? Tell us a bit about how you ended up here as a published author.

My journey to becoming a writer stems from when I was 12 years old. In the year 2000 my father decided to take my younger brother and I around Australia to experience this great big brown and barren land of ours. My father was a prospector, digging up gold and teaching others the craft.

Because of this, my brother and I were homeschooled in the outback. We lived in tents for a few years and didn’t have access to the same entertainment as other kids our age. Sometimes it would be weeks between even seeing a TV, and so my most cherished joy was the books I would take into the bush. Instead of computer games my brother and I used our imagination (Crazy I know) and built cities of rock structures in the desert. We used our toy cars to craft roads in the sand and play in these stone metropolises. Soon, I began writing stories about my little rock towns and sure enough, this blossomed into creating an entire world of made up cities and countries. To this day, I have a wealth of documents from that time of maps and stories about these creations. Many of which are sprinkled in the names and places in Awoken Forest.

Let’s talk about world building! How did/do you practically plan your world, especially when you have multiple cultures within it? What strategies helped you achieve that?

I suppose as I mentioned before with my rock cities, my world building has evolved over time based on my experiences in life. I absolutely devoured TV shows like Battlestar Galactica and Stargate as a teen and my political leaning full time job adds a spark of political intrigue into the books. I was that nerd that built a whole world with fantasy maps, whole countries and histories and I feel like I am cheating a bit by tapping into the wonders of my 12-13 year old self. Arbonar was written for me by my younger self, I just never realised it. There are two full manila folders of notes and maps in there. The Ashes of the Injai has so much lore to build on and I am so excited to expand the world building. If I wasn’t an after hours author, I would spend hours pouring over those notes!

The world you’ve created is stunning, the settings are deep and intriguing and your writing style is filled with lush descriptive language. What helped you get that essence down on paper from what you imagined in your mind?

I imagined describing Arbonar as it appeared in my mind, like a film playing out. I don’t have the developed literary skills like many authors and envy them their mastery of English, but what I have written tries to best encapsulate a real lived-in world. I tried to ensure that a reader’s senses were piqued. I think that’s important for the author/reader relationship. To really connect and share an intimate yet wide reaching world. You are the characters in this world. What do you see through their eyes? What do you feel, taste, smell. I keep that tucked in my head, whether I stick to that remains to be seen haha!

Let’s talk about reviews and edits. Did you self edit, pay for an editor, get Beta readers — what was that process like and any tips for other authors?

Great questions and I think this is important for published authors to share with aspirational authors because there are so many ways to skin a cat.

Reviews. You cannot truly review your own book. No one is perfect, except maybe my dog, Oscar. Writing a novel is so much more than sitting down and tapping keys or squiggling lines on a page. I dont know how many times I read and re-read passages, saw nothing wrong with it, patted myself on the back and called it a day. Only to come back two or three weeks later and wonder what drugs I was on thinking this passage sounded good, or that dialogue sounded natural. Hell, I even had words in there that I thought, that absolutely doesn’t mean that!

Edits. I self edited first. I printed everything into a big folder and went to town. When it came to developmental edits, well I am lucky enough to be part of the greatest and most amazing bookclub that has graced this universe, and the one prior to the big bang. A Novel Idea, were my guinea pigs, my ultimate Beta readers. Its very handy to force 5 people to read your book. Often writers will receive advice like ‘hey take this to a stranger and don’t rely on your friends’. But honestly, a friend is someone that can say to you ‘hey, well done, you wrote a book. Let me give you some pointers so it doesn’t read like a steaming pile of garbage’. Trust your friends or those closest to you. If you have sycophantic friends then join a writing group. Seek out the criticism, live for it!

Fun fact, I was almost suspended from giving a review of my own book because technically I didn’t read the book haha!

I took many paths though. I found a Beta reader on Goodreads, who restored my faith in humanity.

I also paid for a line editor once I was fairly sure I had the story I wanted to tell. I found Liam through Writing WA Literati. Liam has been a massive boon for my book, but also my confidence when fighting imposter syndrome.

Tips for other authors:

Find time to write, some people tell you to write everyday, but as someone with a full-time job and other responsibilities, that can be tough. Set yourself time in a calendar, lock yourself away. For me, its bath time. I did most of my brainstorm surrounded by bubbles. Honestly I would conduct meetings in the bath if I could.

Tell us about your book series! Where can we find it?

Ah well, I hope you are sitting down because this might take a while!

Awoken Forest is a story about a small agrarian community wrestling with the realisation that they’ve forgotten their place in a long-lost empire. Their past comes knocking—hard—and the consequences are devastating.

In all seriousness, The Ashes of The Injai series and the sequel to Awoken Forest is in full swing. The story will span 5 books and I have so much character development and thrills coming so stay tuned. The story will follow the events of Awoken Forest and the aftermath of so much cultural and political change that happens. The characters on Arbonar will live with their decisions, their struggles and who they are. Will the events of Awoken Forest begin the downfall of a peaceful people, or will they become corrupted by the forces that work against them. Will they join with those forces or fight to keep their way of life alive.

I am currently writing a novella titled Faith Unwoven which is set 10 years prior to the events of the book. It centres around Cotsh, a Sageling who appears in Awoken Forest. He has been approached by a young girl to search for her father who went missing in the Northern Forests. However Cotsh soon finds out that this man was escaping persecution from a radicalised sect of the Rahsu. Now Cotsh himself is realising that the teachings he grew up with may not be what they seem.

The novella will be released later this year and will be free for readers that sign up to my newsletter via www.wesleycroft.com. Here I will share updates and its also a handy spot where I will begin to review books from other indie authors.

News and Bookclub

Book Review - Nightfall in the Forest of Betrayal.