December 10, 2022 - Update

Hi!

Thankfully I had a great week of writing. I’m feeling the pressure to finish book 7 this month so that it can go through all the necessary revisions and editing before Mr. Baldree gets it in February. We are on track and I’ll keep working hard to keep it that way.

This week, I had an issue with something that rarely plagues me as an author: other characters from other stories getting loud in my head. I tend to be very focused on my current story, and rarely will other characters get loud enough to create a distraction. But this week, one did.

The story is actually what I plan to write after I finish Divine Apostasy (DA). The future series takes place in the same universe as DA and even contains some of the same characters. I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to spoil DA.

Eventually, if this character continues to talk to me with scenes that I can’t get out of my head, I’ll be forced to write them, even if no one sees them for years. This is a bit superstitious of me, but after reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, I believe stories find people to tell them. And if you don’t tell it, eventually the voices and scenes inside your head will disappear, as that story finds another author to tell it.

The other significant item related to my writing this week was the emotional impact some of the coming scenes had on my mood. The hard thing is getting that emotion on the page, which I’m not sure I did. But each character lives in my mind surrounded by a cloud of past, present, and future states. Sometimes when a character does something that I know is the beginning of a huge change in their future self, it gets to me, even though the readers of the series might not feel that impact for another four books.

This update is already too long, but I wanted to mention that I wrote the seventh trial this week (which we should get to in a week or two). I whipsawed between this is amazing and it’s garbage and I should throw it all away. I’m trying to combine concepts and foreshadowing that were sprinkled through multiple books, and the complexity of it all gave me a headache and turned my brain to mush.

I pray that what I attempted turns out satisfying. I worry that I’m attempting to write something bigger than I’m capable of as an author. Of course this always happens near the end of a book. I find reasons to hate it and convince myself it will ruin the entire series. So much dysfunction in a single person. Haha.

I opened up chapters 49, 50, and 51 to Root.

I opened up chapters 52, 53, and 54 to Harvester.

I added chapters 55, 56, and 57 to Step Master, Blapy’s Favorite, and Divine.

Enjoy!

This week was a reminder why you are so important to me. I only put this much effort into my writing because you and the other fans of the series are here to enjoy it. You make me want to be a better writer, and I’m thankful for that.

Take care,

AFK