A New Day

It's a new day here. I've completed my second novel and have been thinking about my next project. I love moments like this when the world seems full of possibilities and I have all of them to choose from. Of course, in my case, that's something of an illusion since I already know what my next project is. But still I like to think about the possibilities.

So once I create an ebook of Book 2 for myself I'm done with it until the publisher tells me they are ready for it. They aren't at the moment because my main contact is suffering from post-Sandy damage down in New Jersey and is without power. Consequently, she is having trouble contacting others in the company. But since Book 1 is still in production, I can wait a bit for them to get to Book 2. The important thing is I completed it before the deadline I gave myself and can now move on.

And so I now can begin work on Book 4. That's so surreal to me. I haven't worked on this part of the story in five or ten years. And with all the setbacks I had selling Book 1 in 2010 and 2011 I never thought I'd be working on it so soon. But here I am.

I sketched out the plot for the novel months ago when, one Saturday morning, it all became clear to me. Since then I've been thinking about where to resume the story. You see, I end Book 3 in a very dark place. Iriel, the sweet young elf, who takes in stray animals and is willing to help anyone in need, kills another elf. The elf an important person in Iriel's life -- saying more than this would be a spoiler and I don't want to do that. 

So in Book 4, Iriel must deal with the loss and what she's done. And so I think the story resumes a few weeks later once the group is on the road again. That allows Iriel time to grieve and the group time to go back to town to get supplies before setting out.

But the really important thing here is Iriel's character development. She changes from this experience and I want to show that. At the same time, I had to add a lot of new scenes in the sketch I did to make the book complete and I wanted to take the reader some place they had never been before. That was hard to do but I had one idea along those lines. Now I get to see how well or how poorly that idea works.

So I'm off on a new adventure of my own, drafting Book 4. I've give updates as I go because I think I want to show the readers of this blog what the writing process is like for me. And the best way to do that is to capture it at I go.

Keep writing everyone.