Confusion

So, I just had quite probably the most grueling and difficult couple of weeks in the year at work. So, it was pretty terrible, but also from now on it really doesn’t get any worse. It’s kind of all downhill from here, so I’m excited about finally getting some time to time to breathe and having less stress.

I had so much stress these last few days, I really need a vacation as soon as possible. I can’t wait until July when I’m gonna take a week off. I really want to go somewhere with a pool during that week. The heat has been unlike anything I’ve seen, and that’s considering that I live in the coldest part of the country. I still don’t have any defined plans because I ended up using my money to pay off my car and all my credit cards, so I don’t have that much money anymore, but yay for not having any more debts, I’m so excited. So, I might not be able to have as fancy a vacation as I wanted to have, but it’s great to not have any debt.

On terms of book production, things have been…confusing. Seriously, I have so many series and projects up in the air that I ended up having to use notion to keep all the projects on track and figure out what I already had, and what was missing. It seems like I could realistically launch the three main series I have in the way that I wanted (book 1 out, book 2 in short preorder, book 3 in longer preorder), but I have to really work hard at it.

All three book 1s are nearly ready, just need to tie up lose ends between books 1 and 2 and complete the final drafts, and they also have covers. Books 2 still need…a bit more work. I need to get through the climax of Blood Song, finish the rewrite of Broken Memories, and complete the final draft of Wings of Vengeance. So, maybe another month of work if I can truly focus. I think that Broken Memories is the one that is going to give me the most trouble. But so far it’s going pretty well. I got a bit blocked on the part that had the biggest change, where Leith meets the shadow, but the new version works so much better and I got a couple thousand words done today in between meetings and other job things. And it’s 77k, I’m so happy! Finally, a book that isn’t a ridiculous amount of words long. Even Shattered was longer I think (can’t remember the wordcount) so I’m gonna be pretty happy doing this rewrite. As far as I remember, it was just a matter of improving the writing which was atrocious, and tweaking a few scenes to make the story flow better. In fact, I think with the change to the scenes that I did today, I might have snipped off about 4k and a lot of unnecessary nonsense.

To be honest I can’t wait until I finish Broken Memories because the outline for Broken Innocence is flowing pretty neatly. I’m getting some cool ideas that are finally making me excited about writing that book. Which is great because I’ll definitely need them for when I tackle the horrors that will be matching it with Protection From Death because those two books happen at roughly the same timeframe and interact a bit, which will come back to kick me in the ass, I’m sure. Probably at the climax, of course. As always.

But I can’t help but be excited by how interesting the worldbuilding for The Floating World (Vael’s world) is going. I have realized the truth about who Leith really is, and it’s so cool that I can track him all the way back to the The Floating World through Liria and Death. It’s kind of cool and I smirk every time I remember how that’s gonna go.

Oh, and the other day I caught a book covers sale and found one that would fit Luminosity. It’s nothing super amazing, but it fits and it’s well done, and more importantly, it cost me $50 USD, which was perfectly reasonable. So, I worked a bit more on the Luminosity outline and the ideas I came up with were… pretty exciting. I was surprised by how exciting they were and how cool the worldbuilding was. I usually don’t really care about the worldbuilding so this was a pleasant surprise. It’s probably the most complex of my series, to be honest. Not that I wanted it to be, I just wanted something quick and cool to sell, it just kind of…happened. But I’m getting some good use out of a bunch of old ideas from the early 2000s, so I’m just gonna roll with it.

For as long as it’s cool, of course.

Anyway, I’m just very excited about how Broken Innocence is going, even though I haven’t finished the outline. God, I wish I could go faster. Like, why can’t I just finish stuff already? I want to start selling the books now.

But, I’m not making the ReLiving/Remade Anew mistake again. No. I’m doing things right this time, and that means careful planning and editing and reviewing. Even if it feels like it’s taking forever.

God, do I need a good vacation.