First Light Through the Bamboo Gate
May 2nd 2025 | by Sheri Chen
The first arc of When the Heavens Turned Away is finished. The website is finally live. The fire pit on my zen porch is flickering softly beside me, and I’m holding a cup of tea that tastes just slightly like possibility.
If you’re reading this, you’re standing at the threshold of a world I’ve carried for years, a world of broken immortals, haunted blades, and love that dares to outlast fate. I’m so excited to finally have a space to share not just my stories, but the thoughts, dreams, and behind-the-scenes scrolls that float between them.
This page is still unfurling like a banner in a mountain breeze, but the essentials are here:
Books = Ten Days to Unmake a God is out in the world (and maybe breaking a few hearts already), and WTHTA is moving into its next phase.
Newsletter = “Join the Sect” is now live! You’ll get early chapters, secret fortunes, occasional chaos, and cozy porch ramblings.
Blog = That’s this! I’ll be sharing worldbuilding thoughts, dream journaling, favorite writing tools, latest c-drama obvession’s and the occasional unhinged rant about cultivation physics.
Right now, I’m celebrating the milestone by catching up on some of the stories that made me fall in love with the genre in the first place. I’ve been rereading Remnants of Filth (so many feelings), revisiting the brilliance of Mo Dao Zu Shi and Thousand Autumns, and sobbing all over again at Heaven Official’s Blessing. There’s something about those beautifully broken characters that keeps echoing in my own writing, guilt that tastes like devotion, love that refuses to dissolve even in death.
So thank you for being here. Whether you found me through RoyalRoad or stumbled in from the mountains by accident, I’m glad you made it. There’s ink in the air and stories on the wind.
Welcome to the sect.
“Even now, nine blossoms across time.”
– Sheri 陳雪瑞 Void Quill
