State of the Novels, June Edition

Photo by Patrick Gage, Creative Commons, Flickr.

That’s right – novels.

Plural.

As in three!

I am so pleased with myself, I had to share.

Book 1, still tentatively titled The Shattered Door, is with my copy editor. I love what this book has turned into. This is the third time I’ve written it (I only made it through Draft 1 of the previous iterations). It’s got everything I want in it – murder, kidnapping, lies, deceit, love and sarcasm.

My editor is having a perfect storm of personal crises right now and I have told her to take her time – family comes before novel editing every day of the week. It will be a while before I work on it again.

In the meantime, Book 2 (tentative title of Sniffers) will be a finished zero draft by Sunday. Yesterday I printed it out to read and refamiliarize myself with the beginning before I write the last 5 or so ending scenes.

Book 3 is almost done being plotted. I have 5 scenes and a few more try/fail cycles to figure out and then I’m off to start writing it next week. No title for it yet. I am not good choosing titles for my novels yet, but I’ll get there.

I’ve spent a good month or so feeling like I wasn’t making much progress on Sniffers and that my work was almost grinding to a halt, and now it seems like overnight I’m almost done. I recall this happening with The Shattered Door as well.

It looks like I am still on track for my mid-September 3 book release date. Back when I felt like I wasn’t getting much done, I was worried that I would not make my deadline. I’ll be a bit worried until they’re out. And then I’ll worry whether people like the books. And then I’ll worry over, well, who knows what, but there will be something.

So, the writing is going well, life is good and the sun is out. What more could I want?