Blood Requiem Final Draft

Just got editorial notes for Blood Requiem back from my editor yesterday. I have to say, I'm very excited about the final draft of this book. I've already gotten some great feedback from my writing group on a few of the sequences in the book, and looking at my editor's notes, I think it will all synergies very well. Book 3 will coalesce into something pretty awesome, I think.

I'm back to the point with book 3 where I'm excited about and proud of what is going on, which is always a good place to be as a writer. Like most writers, I inevitably go through phases with each project where I'm alternatingly excited about, bored with, horrified/embarrassed by, excited about again, and ultimately proud of a given book. It's nice to be in the positive swing of that once again.

I'm aiming to get the final revision done by 12 March. That should be doable. After that, it'll go through copy edits, and before you know it I'll have ARCs in my hands!

Anyway, all this is to say that I generally enjoy and like what I write, and I think that's a good thing :-).

DARK IMMOLATION (The World Turned Upside Down)

Folks, this morning I (FINALLY!) emailed my agent a revised draft of Dark Immolation (Book 2 of the Chaos Queen Quintet).

I could not feel more relieved.

Revising this book has been incredibly difficult, and that's putting it lightly. I'll likely write a post or two in the future talking about the specifics, but here's the short of it: because of (1) life circumstances and problems and (2) the learning curve behind writing a five-book series, this book took me forever, and it's easily the most difficult thing I've ever written. I'd heard that once I started writing professionally there'd be times where the writing would just become straight up work, losing basically any attraction or redeeming quality that might've drawn me to it in the first place. The last six months, more or less, have been one long instance of that.

The good news? That moment has now passed, and I can RELAX.

That said, let's talk about the book!

Some of you may remember that when I finished the first draft of Duskfall, I wrote a blog post about it. It was actually the very first post on this blog, so that's kind of cool thing to remember. But I neglected to do this for the first draft of Dark Immolation (mainly because my daughter was born right around the time I finished it, but also because the feels of existential dread and agonizing inadequacy regarding this book were already setting in), so I'm going to give you some stats about the book right now. Check it:

• Title: Dark Immolation - Still a working title, but the fact that it's in the frontmatter of Duskfall makes me think it might be permanent. I don't mind; I like the title, I came up with it after all, and I've been playing with some new tentative titles for books 3 and 4 that compliment "Dark Immolation" help with the symmetry of the series.
• Version: 2.4 - So this is technically the second draft, (that's what the 2 stands for), although I've made so many passes at it over the past 8 months that you could technically count it as the third or fourth draft if you were so inclined; that's what the 4 represents--some other revision passes during this aggregate "second draft" phase. There were also a few minor drafts between 2.3 and 2.4 (2.3.1, 2.3.2, etc.), so, yeah...this novel has gone through the wringer.
• Total Word Count: 212,500 words - For reference, the first draft of Duskfall was around 184K, while the final draft clocked in at just under 150K. The first draft of Dark Immolation, on the other hand, ended up being a whopping 265K, so I feel pretty good that I've already gotten it down to 212. That said, there's still a lot of trimming that needs to happen. I'll feel happy if I can get it under 190K by the time it's in final draft form. We'll see!
• Chapters: 52 and an Epilogue
• Viewpoint Characters: 7, with a number of other minor viewpoints at varying degrees of inclusion. That's two more major POVs than the first book, for reference.
• Start date: October 2014
• End date: August 2016 - Those numbers are slightly deceiving, as I finished the first draft sometime in Julyish of 2015, and started the second draft in December of that year. That said, that was a lot longer than I'd hoped to spend on this book. I'll really just need to write an entire post about why, but again, to summarize, DI has been incredibly difficult, but also a huge learning process, and what I've learned will profoundly affect how I move forward into Book 3.

So, that's the gist of it! Stay tuned for more info on the DI process, a mini Southwestern US book tour we're doing in September, Salt Lake Comic Con info, and more!

In the meantime, here's the song that's been playing over and over in my head (and through my speakers) since I hit the send button on that email to my agent. The fiery adrenaline, strange emptiness, and sweet relief of victory, my friends*:





* Yeah...I've become total #Hamiltrash and I DON'T CARE WHO KNOWS IT.

Retreat to the House on the Hill II

As some of you may remember, last year I attended a writing retreat here in Utah and it was amazing.

Well, I attended the same retreat two weeks ago, courtesy of the eclectically brilliant, academic-hating, ice-giant-of-a-man Dave Butler, and once again triumphed over my writing foes.

I can't say for sure exactly how much work I got done this time because it was mostly revision, but I revised upwards of 80,000 words, and re-outlined the main story braid of book 2 in the Chaos Queen Quintet for further revision. It was fantastic.

The retreat is a cool thing for a number of reasons. (1) I get a lot of writing done. Writing happens pretty much from the moment everyone wakes up until dinner that evening, with itty-bitty breaks here and there for lunch and shooting the breeze with the other retreaters. (2) I get to hang out with some other awesome writers--we all eat dinner together, and then play board games until the late hours. It is a lot of fun, and this year I got to hang out with Jon Rock, Daniel Braithwaite, Scott Taylor, Aaron Michael Ritchey, Eric Patten, Michael Dalzen, and Marion Jensen. We had a special guest in the form of Nick Dianatkhah, and of course were hosted by Dave Butler.

It was quite an enjoyable week.

Highlights include the Edward M. Kovel Awards:

Remind me to tell you why these awards are so amazing sometime.

A delightful, over-too-soon game of Twilight Imperium:

The greatest board game on the planet (or in the galaxy, for that matter). And this was only a six-player game.

And, of course, making significant progress on version 2.0 of CQQ2. That, my friends, adds up to a very successful week.

Wait, it's almost July?

And suddenly a month has passed. Yikes.

I've been busy. First of all, what should, *hopefully* be the final-ish revision of Duskfall (you can tell how confident I am about them already, can't you?) has taken more time and effort than I'd hoped. Ain't that always the way. I'm happy to be wrapping them up, though.

I've also joined a writing group, so that has been cool. I'm sure I'll talk more about that later, but I'm very happy about it so far.

Oh, and I went to Alaska. Had an adventure or two. Because, you know, that's where I'm from and such.

Between those things, which are for the most part very awesome, and some decidedly not-awesome other things like Hugo award controversies and the recent murders in Charleston, I've been avoiding saying much on the internet of late. But I think I've collected myself a bit and I'm ready to jump back into blogger-ness, which means continuing my How I Got Published and #FIF Series (Serieses? Serieses'ses''''? Stupid english...), checking in more with general updates on my writing (including writing group stuff) and life in general (including Alaska stuff), and maybe even sharing some thoughts I have about recent events. So, that's that.

I'm Not Dead

I'm really not. I did just finish the most recent revisions on Duskfall, though. Just the other day I sent the most recent version of the manuscript to my agent, so that's neat!

Now, I'm working on the sequel to Duskfall, tentatively titled Dark Immolation--not to be confused with my previous project, Dark Immolation, which is now tentatively titled Dreadnight. I'll explain more about that soon, but long story short, I'm really excited about my upcoming projects.

The good news: now that I finished that batch of revisions, I'll hopefully have time to blog more! So, that might be a thing. Hopefully. :-)