And so it begins

The end of the beginning has started, or something like that.
Last year was monstrous, in many ways; working from home, the global human malware issue and, well other issues I keep trying to write about, but the mental condition is hard to explain from the inside.

I am editing the last chapter this week, but my co-author and I still need to jointly edit the last three together and that is starting to cut it real fine for editing and release dates.
So what’s happening?
I spoke with my publisher yesterday to discuss a few things, and one of those was a discussion about word count. From a prologue that started with around 2000 words, then expanded into a badly written novella coming in around 34k, it’s found its way up to 180k, and there’s no bloat in there, that I can tell.

So, we’re going for a two part story, with Act 1 as part 1, then Acts 2 and 3 will finish the book off.

Doing it this way does a few things for me –
Releases my (neah, our) first ever published book
Gives more time to finish Act 3 to a satisfying conclusion
Time to plan out the book series I intended to write to start with
Have the next book close if not already complete by the time part 2 is released
And time to do other projects around the house I haven’t had time for

When I started writing the next book, I have to admit, I hadn’t planned anything, just sat down and started bashing at the keyboard, writing scenes I thought would be cool in a story. Well, the scenes are good, not awesome.
Because of the timeline, and to make this series to flow, I need to plan the hell out of it, or you get the usual situation of retcons or plot holes (just writing those words makes my skin crawl).

I’m excited to finally be nearing completion of this book, and even more excited to have something published.

This book, will have its name released within the next few weeks, once the cover design is finished, and I can finally stop calling it ‘this book’.

I could not have written such a fleshed out story and reached this point without my co-author and Wife, Amanda Breeze.
She has been my rock during this all, contributing arguments, story additions, character creating and polishing, arguments and good company.
Amanda has written an 800 word short story for a competition, that is written so well, we are including it as canon. It takes place after this book, so I will post it here later this year.

I hope 2021 is your year. Go out and grab it with both hands, and give it a shake if it turns away from your path.

Featured image is provided by ““A beginning is only the start of a journey to another beginning.”” by katerha is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Modified – rotated and cropped to fit space