Catching up with CJ Yeates

I’m proud to have finished a major creative project this year. We Leapt Into the Sky is my first science fiction novel, and I decided to share it as an illustrated serial. I’ve enjoyed improving my landscape drawing skills over the past few years, and I wanted to use this project to teach myself how to create better sci-fi illustrations. Ultimately, I made 16 illustrations to accompany the story, which is about 380 pages long.

The progress in my art is apparent in the improvement from the first illustration to the later ones. I’m so happy with how much I learned through the writing and art I did for this project.

Short fiction has been a major focus of mine in 2023 as well. The world of literary magazines is an interesting place. There is so much great work out there and so many wonderful magazines. At the same time, it can be tough. Recently, well-established magazines have closed, and others have quietly gone defunct. Sometimes finding the right magazine for a story is sheerly a matter of persistence. I made over 150 short fiction submissions this year, and I’ve had a couple stories that went out to 10 or 20 magazines before they found a home.

Still, I’ve found sending my work to literary magazines very rewarding. I’ve had a great experience with newer magazines in particular. The editors have been so kind and enthusiastic about writing. With so much turnover of literary magazines, sometimes the best place for a short story doesn’t even exist yet. My favorite piece of short fiction I’ve written this year was published in Hearth Stories—it’s a fantasy story called “The Scholar of the Journeying Archive.”

Since I’m planning to query literary agents with my fantasy novel in 2024, I’m glad I’ve gotten more experience with submitting my work. It makes querying less daunting. I’ve rewritten this book multiple times, making major changes to the story, and it has improved each time. Though I’m not formally illustrating this story, I enjoy drawing locations and characters to help me develop my ideas. I recently drew the two main characters from the story.

I’ve continued to paint for fun. Abstract acrylic paintings have been a source of creative experimentation for me. I love working with texture. This year, I made a pair of abstract landscapes that were inspired by the look of a river running through a canyon.

Some of my paintings are fun experiments that I may eventually paint over. Others are finished, but they don’t always feel complete until I’ve framed them. I finally framed a set of small acrylic pour paintings I made. The idea was to create a series of abstract pour paintings around the theme of elements: fire, earth, water, and air. I like the individual paintings, but they work even better when framed and displayed as a set. They feel complete.