Almost halfway done…

It’s been a busy summer. I’ve moved for a new job which entails a lot of travel, but still found some time to write. Seven chapters of the second book are ‘complete’ (scare quotes because revision is always possible). I’m in the middle of Ch. 8, but want to hash out some chronology/plot issues before moving further forward.

A problem of multiple character perspectives is that the writing has to match up chronologically or the reader is confused. If you plan it all ahead of time but then want to change something in the middle of writing, you have to re-balance everything and make sure it still makes sense. That’s where I am. After beginning the chapter, I decided a re-write with another scene/chapter split was appropriate, and needed to re-do the perspective rotation. It’s a pain, but it did give me an opportunity to slide in another chapter I cut during a previous balancing. So that’s nice.

This book will almost definitely be longer than the first. In The Mountain Throne, a protagonist’s (Leasha’s) chapters were fairly short. One was only a single scene. That won’t be the case here. There will also be more chapters. The first book had 14 and this one will be more like 18.

I’m usually reticent to share details of unfinished work, but I think I’ll leave something here as a reward to those who actually read this blog. It’s the art (by Luis Royo) that inspired one of the new characters. Now, this isn’t how the character actually is. How boring would that be if I just took a piece of art straight? But it’s a cool piece that directly inspired the new character’s looks and attitude.

I like it.