Legends of Windemere

Whelp . . . Here we are . . . Staring down the barrel of the last full week of school.  Not sure it’s a barrel though.  More like a walkway that is probably nowhere near as long as I hope it will be.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love spending time with my son.  The only thing is that I repeatedly fear that I won’t get my work done before I go from full-time author to full-time parent mode.  July is going to start off a little bumpy from what I can tell since I’m still getting things together for Ichabod, but we’ll get eaten by that dragon when we get to it.

I did finish editing Legends of Windemere: Path of the Traitors and was rather amazed at something.  I didn’t have to rework that much of it.  Yes, I can hear many authors and editors shrieking in the back.  There’s that whole ‘rewrite 80-90% of the rough draft’ rule that people abide by.  Does that really count if you spent weeks/months designing characters and the story?  Technically, I do two outlines before I even touch the first draft.  One is a long story synopsis along with character bios, location lists, monster lists, supporting cast lists, and key info write ups.  That last one would include stuff like how the champion prophecy works and the Compass Key.  After that, I do a chapter style outline that I make sure is extensive.  Every morning before I write, I look it over and add/merge stuff as the story progresses.  Sometimes I even spend a day going back to fix stuff.  With all of that, I wonder if I can even call what I do a true first draft.

Anyway, I’m nearly halfway through Legends of Windemere: Warlord of the Forgotten Age.  I should be able to finish it next week even with a few other things going on.  This one has needed a few section rewrites.  The going is tougher here since it’s the last one and I can tell that there are areas that I rushed.  Hopefully those have been fixed because they were mostly in the beginning.  Some things were mentioned and disappeared too, so I have to fix that when I come to it.  Specifically, a magic item that I forgot about and hints of a conversation that had to happen, but didn’t.  I might just get rid of the hints because I can’t get the characters to a point where they need to have the talk.  It’s not easy ending a series, especially when you want to create tension in a rather tight-knit and stable group.  Part of me still wonders if that book title is the one I thought of and lost two years ago.  That’s going to eat away at me for a long time.

Not much else is going on here.  Going to be a while before I can discuss my sleep apnea test results.  Getting together with friends at the zoo tomorrow.  The kid is excited that he gets to play tour guide and teach everyone about the animals.  Today is just laundry and editing for me after I get home from a local carnival.  Having a somewhat low key weekend always makes me feel awkward.  I should be enjoying it, but I always get this feeling that something is going to happen.  Like it’s some kind of calm before the storm thing.  Then again, next week does have a lot going on besides editing.

Oh yeah, Protecting Bedlam had its first week and I hope people enjoyed it.  Might not have been the wisest decision to introduce everyone to the third story.  Nice to see some of the villains getting some attention.  Considering these are full chapter sections, I’m not sure what I expect from this.  Writing the book was somewhat cathartic and helped get the idea out of my head.  The series doesn’t sell or get much attention even when I promote, so I can’t figure out if I should write the next one for publishing.  It’s frustrating because I get compliments on the characters and story, but the sales don’t seem to match the excitement for it.  Maybe this is something that is more suited for television and movies?

I’ve decided that my summer project will be Quest of the Broken-Hearted, which is a one shot spin-off sequel for Legends of Windemere.  Not sure how much I can talk about here since it would reveal a little bit about the ending.  My plan will be to publish this next summer, but I want to write it soon after my last editing run of the final book to make sure everything is fresh.  It’s going to be in almost short story form similar to the Bedlam series where the character faces a different challenge in each one until the very end.  Each chapter title is the monster, except for the character’s name being the first one and Lacarsis (City of Evil) being the second. That’s all I can say for now.

Plans for the week:

1. Finish editing Warlord of the Forgotten Age.
2. Zoo time!
3. School stuff!
4. Design characters for one of the Sin stories if I finish editing.
5. Read over the Quest of the Broken-Hearted outline.
6. Catch up on sleep one day.
7. Determine the fate of mankind.

By the way, WONDER WOMAN WAS A LOT OF FUN!  Almost forgot about mentioning that.  Feels like it’s been a really long week.