Checking in!

Yeah, wow, it's been a while since I posted, so I'm just coming up for air really quick to check in. Still hard at work on Heir of Tanaris and Defenders of the Wildings. These are two very large projects, but I'm still plugging away, more or less steadily, and making progress.

I'm almost done with the first major revision of Heir. This is turning out to be a very slippery book; some things about it are just really hard to pin down. Even after planning my revision and then doing the revision, I'm still changing stuff. I think I've written more new material for this book than I usually do in my revisions, so much about it has changed, especially what's going on with Davreos, the hero. I've been studying the Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne, and I think the next step will be to take apart Heir using this method to try to really get it figured out. It's not bad the way it is, but I'm trying to step up my game anyway, and I feel like there are weak spots that could be a lot stronger.

On the Defenders analysis, I'm on about page 250 out of 450. Just started book 5, but the last two books are a lot longer than the first four. It's going pretty well, there's a couple of supporting characters I've been struggling with what to do with and finally came to the conclusion that one of them has to die *sob*. Also, I was going over a scene the other day, just a small scene, and digging a little deeper into the conflict, when suddenly I realized what one of the major conflicts of the whole series needs to be. I had already touched on it a little, but now the full breadth of it has opened up. So, more rewriting. But it's the sort of thing that will take Defenders from a fun read but kind of lightweight to having a lot more depth and substance. In the meantime, I've booked the cover artist for this fall (yes, he's busy; good thing I didn't wait too long to contact him!).

I've also got some short stories on the sidelines, a set of backstories to go with Source-Breaker (this will be a newsletter exclusive) and another collection of stories I wrote last year, that will go up for sale (but subscribers will also have the chance to get it for free).

And I sketched out a couple of new novel ideas, or one might turn into a series.

Back to work!