So ‘The Mercenary Prince’ is done and waiting for its turn on the editing block.  This is a book set to be released in December, which means I’ll be sending the March/April release to my editor.  Another week before I ask Jason about the cover art too.  That means I have very little to do here besides cleaning in preparation for the annual Super Bowl party next Sunday.  Some special guests might be here too.

I will be outlining the next two books since their stories have been altered a bunch due to events in the latest completion.  There’s a notebook idea that I’m toying with too, but I ran into a problem already.  It’s slated for 2 books and I think I can chop out some stuff to make it a stand alone.  This does alter a few things like the amount of villains and part of the scope.  The first book was going to be an adventure and the second a looming war that the ‘hero’ has to stop.  That second book was rather flimsy.  Maybe a day of thinking without any other pressure will help.  I have a week since I won’t be tackling Book 10 until February.

Odd thing is that with the completion of this idea in the notebook, I get to move on to a clean one.  There’s still going to be space that I gradually add into for the ‘Grand Finale’ of Windemere.  Just listing heroes and villains who have enough impact to be a focus on the great battle.  Originally, I wanted everyone to be involved as long as they survived their story.  This might change since I have some stories that don’t fit that.  They might join all the heroes for the last push though.  It’s a tough idea and I can’t even discuss it because it would reveal who lives and dies in all of the series.

For anyone who missed it, I have an AUTHOR WEBSITE!  It’s to make any big announcements like upcoming releases and catch the attention of people who aren’t in the blogosphere.  It’s going to be a work in progress for a while as I learn more tricks.  No idea how to discover traffic, but it is a comfort to have another toe in the Internet waters.  Since I lost a bunch of marketing avenues last year to sites closing or discovering that they simply didn’t work for me, I’m finding myself at a loss on what to do.  I do interviews at times and hunt for guest blogs, but I’m in that mentality where all I want to do is write and step away from what I’m calling the ‘monkey dancing’ side of being an author.  Not easy to do when I have a book that isn’t even 2 months old and has slowed to a pitiful crawl even with marketing.  Fate of a series author.  I think I have a post about that coming up in a week or two.  Guess a week of busy work won’t hurt to get my head together.

So what am I going to do?

1. Final outline for ‘Tribe of the Snow Tiger’ and ‘Charms of the Feykin’.  First one will be easier than the second.
2. Work more on ‘Sutyra’.  The solution is on the tip of my brain too.  Then I’ll decide which path I’ll choose for the next notebook.  One of my heroes has been horribly ignored for a year since he’s in a different ‘track’ than the others.
3. Clean house for party.
4. Bike or sleep in.
5. Watch more of ‘D.Gray-Man’.  Got the first 2 seasons.  Not sure what to watch after those though.
6. Write a future blog post or two.  Still no idea what to write about here any more.  Hate to say I’m burning out on WordPress, but it feels that way.  I know if I take a break then it’ll be really hard to come back too.  Think the winter chill is assisting my sense of melancholy.
7. Uncover only one secret of the universe and lose the information in the laundry.
8. Ponder more of Project Phoenix (tempted to about this one again) and find the list of the 30+ story ideas.  Might want to see if any of them are dead in the water again.  Hate to admit it, but ‘Zombie Girl’ seems to be faltering even more than before.  ‘Yum Tum Tavern’ is in the same boat, but the main character shows up in another series.  Honestly, I’m not even sure what the story on either of these are any more.