It’s Moved

My word counter has finally moved, and I have something to blog about. I was stuck in the story a little bit, and trying too hard to get round it. Once I stopped thinking about solutions then the perfect thing pops into my head!

I’ve also been working on the cover for book II of Song of the Arkafina, which will be coming out in paperback on March 10th, I hope…

 

Down

Last week I was on a bit of a high. After all, I had two books atop Mushroom’s bestseller list. I was working on book III, and felt as though I might have it ready to send off soon. I had a cover design I was happy with.

Now I am suffering not from writer’s block, but something more like writer’s depression.

It started when Ketha fell from the #1 spot. Yes, I know it had to happen, but couldn’t it have lasted just a little bit longer?

 

More News

Ketha’s Daughter is out now! My publisher sent me a .pdf of the completed book yesterday, and it looks great. I added some extra artwork to the title page and one of the appendices. When I get back home, I will post a couple of samples.

I am the spotlight author on Long and Short reviews, which is pretty exciting as well. I will be answering five questions this week about the way I write.

We will be heading home Friday, after a lovely time here in the USA. Today we had to get extra suitcases to handle all our acquisitions! One thing about living in the Southern hemisphere–since the seasons are opposite it is great being able to shop the springtime sales for sweaters and other cold weather gear!

I sure am looking forward to getting home and getting back to writing though.

 

Countdown

Today is the last day I have to get organized and ready for my trip, so it will be a busy one. I probably won’t do much updating while I am gone, other than a few words here and there. I don’t plan to bring my computer with me, although I am buying an ASUS eee while I am in the US. Prices on small consumer goods are double here what they are in the good old US of A.

Publication for Ketha will go ahead as scheduled. Work on editing book 3 continues. Hopefully I will have it ready to go by mid May and it should hit the ewaves by July. Wrote another thousand words for book 4 last night. I have the idea than one of the problems is the fact that a couple of the characters are rather static; they don’t seem to grow or learn anything new during the course of events. So I plan to give that some thought while I am away and perhaps set up some new challenges for them when I get back.

I am still struggling with the ending. I want it to be happy. I HATE books that don’t end happily, after all the characters have been through. But I also want it to feel real. I think back to the Lord of the Rings. Frodo deserved to be happy–he had saved the world, after all. But there was no joy left in life for him. He had suffered too much. My main character, Katkin, is also like that. I don’t think I can just send her home with her true love and expect them to live happily ever after. I have an idea, but I will have to actually write the words before I know whether or not it will work.

I will keep you posted.

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Ketha

Just heard from my editor that he is happy with Ketha’s Daughter, with the exception of a few minor formatting issues. So it looks as though we are on track to get the book out on April 21st, as planned.

He said he liked it more than Heart of Hythea, which makes me pretty happy. But then he said that he expects the next two to be even better, argh! Pressure…

I am quite sure that book 3, Birth of the Dawnmaid, is as good as the first two, but Beyond the Gyre… Well I just don’t know. But fortunately I still have plenty of time to fix it. I think objectivity might be an issue at this point.

If I work really hard over the weekend I should be finished with all the editing. Then I can go on vacation and leave my lap top behind. Yaya!

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Long Day

Been at the keyboard most of today, doing the final tidy up of Ketha.  Every time I go through it I find a few more mistakes!  But now I am going to put it away until after Jan 1st, review it once more and then send it off to the publisher.  Otherwise I will keep picking at it and picking at it, with no good result.

Tomorrow I will get back to work on Book IV.

I did take a break for an hour or so, to take my son and his girlfriend out to lunch at a new Japanese restaurant that just opened in town.  We had some excellent teppan yaki, and enjoyed ourselves, but when I came out I discovered someone had sideswiped my honda and scraped up the bumper!  Not a happy end to my lunch.  At least the guilty driver left a note…