Cool idea. Looks pretty good so far.

If you can figure out how I'd suggest making the paper a bit less rough looking...looks sort of like sandpaper now. Removing that bump and maybe trying to put a bit of shine on it might work? Giving the journal's cover some depth and texture might improve the look as well. Finally, instead of the black line around the pages, maybe you could play with a very slight drop shadow/inner highlight on the pages to make them separate.

Also, the character is a half-orc barbarian or did I misunderstand? I might be hewing too closely to stereotypes but the script seems a bit too refined for that race/class. Maybe something a bit rougher? There are lots of pretty rough script fonts out there. You can put text on a curve in PS, so you could also have each line go a bit wiggly if you wanted to get away from the very neat block style.

Just some thoughts. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it!
M