Last day of 2015, and all’s quiet on the western…er…blog front. 🙂 I had aspirations of posting a series of updates over the past few months, but, as you can see, they didn’t happen. (This is why I love calendars and scheduling things, because otherwise time is far too slippery.)
Life has been more of a whirlwind than usual since my last update. We finally finished our big family project in August, I got married and moved the end of September, and since then I’ve been settling into being a wife and a stepmother.
I love being married, though I’ll admit being a stepmother is not a direction I ever thought my life would take. That said, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. (It has, however, given me a new sensitivity to all of the stories out there involving evil stepmothers—after all, who wants to be in the same nominal category as the evil Queens from Snow White and Enchanted, or the evil stepmother from every version of Cinderella? Not me, that’s for sure. :P)
I’m blessed that my husband finds being married to a writer fascinating. I knew fiction writing can sound a little crazy to non-writers, but until I really started explaining things to him, I never realized how much I sound like a crazy person when I’m describing all of the different worlds and characters inside my head. He jokes that I shouldn’t tell too many people that I write down what the voices inside my head say. So don’t tell, okay? 🙂
In writing news, I’m excited to announce that not only have I finished my pirate/smuggler novel, but after months of lacking a proper title for it, I finally found one. The book is now called Galaxy’s Way, and I’m finishing up the last read-through before I send it off to my betas. It’ll be out sometime in the first quarter of 2016. I’m excited about it—writing Galaxy’s Way was definitely a wild ride.
Book 4 of The Guardians has taken me a little while to get off the ground, thanks to the spaghetti-like nature of the many plot threads at the end of Treason’s Edge, but it’s going well. The story is already taking unexpected twists and turns and I can’t wait to see how it all plays out. (No idea as to a title yet.)
At the moment, I’m calling the second half of the Ink Realm duology Ink Realm. (I know, I know, usually the first book in a series bears the name of the series. This one’s come out backwards.) It’s off to an interesting start, and I may have already found cover art for it.
With all the general chaos of the past few months, I guess my brain decided it needed to make up for lost time, because I’ve also begun writing a fantasy stand-alone novel tentatively titled, The Stone General. The idea came to me about five years ago, on a trip to Florida with my family. (If I remember correctly, I had one of my brothers jot notes down for me because I was driving at the time.)
It’s been banging around my head since then, but, quite honestly, I’ve been scared to tackle it. I’ve been terrified that I won’t be able to do justice to the story I can see unfolding inside my head. What I’ve learned over the past few years, though, is that no matter how many years I write and how much I grow, I’ll never feel like I’m good enough. So…I’ve decided to just sit down and write it. That way it’ll be out of my head and won’t bother me anymore.
I’ve heard other writers say for years that every book wants to be written a different way, and I’ve written enough myself now to know that’s true. TSG is taking a back-and-forth scene approach with the characters that I’ve not done in a book before. It’s intriguing.
My superhero series, meanwhile, is still brewing. Every so often, it spits out new bits of story and the occasional new character, and the number of peripheral novels that will be connected to the main series keeps growing. I’m starting to suspect I’ll have a monster by the tail with this one. 😛
Hope y’all have a good end to 2015 today, and a great start to 2016 tomorrow. I’ve always thought beginning a new year was exciting—it’s a whole year brimming with promise and potential.
My goal for 2016 is to tell more stories. Better stories. Stories I’d love to read. And to post regular updates. (I also want to read more—that’s important too. Feeds the creative side.)
Happy New Year!