Here’s what I’m working on now . . .
(November 2, 2020)
At long last I have finished the first draft of The Shadow Queen. I finished it on October 30, then sort of collapsed for a few days. This doesn’t actually mean collapsing, it means finally starting to dig into the mountain of other tasks I have been neglecting.
Anyway, enough whining. The good news is, the draft is done. The bad news is, the series is not finished. I have primarily been writing in chronological order, with a few flashbacks to illuminate context. While constructing Shadow Queen, I was running two plot lines and finding it very time-consuming, switching back and forth between them.
At last I latched onto some advice that recommended writing one plot line to the end, then going back to the other. Seventy thousand words later, with the secondary plot line still not finished and with only a patchy idea of how it ends, it finally dawned on me that I was writing a fourth book. I knew by now how Shadow Queen needed to end, but I also knew I was interested in, and beginning to explore, a third plot line as well.
You guessed it. The series will now (probably) be five books.
More good news: 70,000 words (more than half of the fourth book) and 20,000 words of the fifth are completed in first draft.
More bad news: as if I didn’t have enough to do, I’m seriously considering re-issuing both The Legacy and the Lion and The Black King, perhaps in second editions. I am definitely planning new covers for both, and I’m also contemplating taking the advice of one of my readers. He suggested the books would benefit from sub-headings at the start of each scene with the point-of-view character’s name. I’m really liking that idea, and think it might add to the reading experience. Okay, so it’s actually good news, apart from the time-burning aspects.
Thanks for reading!
My previous update …
(March 20, 2020)
The Black King has now been released, and is for sale almost everywhere. This second book in The Yusan Chronicles Series is a much longer, far more complex book than I thought I was going to write. It’s shorter than The Legacy and the Lion, but still a fairly long book.
There is a lot more conflict in The Black King, the psychological drama is far more intense, and there’s more physical peril to the primary characters. “Dark and daring” is how I’m characterizing it. Readers will learn more about the main characters, and about Yusay. I’m hoping they will find it an excellent read.
I’m currently working on book three in The Yusan Chronicles series. I had the first draft about one-third to one-half written, when a severe illness in my family and the demands of my (paid) work necessitated that I put the book on hold in October.
I’m now back at work writing it. Not able to predict a publication date yet. My working title is The Shadow Queen. We learn a great deal more about Patrick and where he comes from. Right now, I’m planning for The Shadow Queen to wrap up a trilogy that encompasses this one long, arching story-line. I am planning to publish other books in the same series, but I may put them in slightly different periods and also group them into trilogies.
I’ve also become very interested in Gar and his early life — something I didn’t anticipate at all when I started this trilogy — so I’m tempted to eventually wander back in time and write a prequel. I don’t know what I’ll do about the series numbering, but that’s a problem for another day.
I may also take a brief break from this series and write the more contemporary, slightly sci fi book I’ve wanted to do for years now. I’m envisioning it as a stand-alone, but it might morph into a series too. I’ve been casually gathering research on it, literally for decades. It’s a bucket list project, for sure.
And I finally purchased Scrivener. I’m hoping it will help keep me organized. Dealing with so many characters over such a long time-line is a challenge. It’s not hard to do it, it’s just very time-consuming to have to keep checking to make sure I’m keeping everything straight, so I’m hoping this will be a tool that frees up more time to write.
Thanks for reading!
