DAWNRISE

I don't know what you were up to last week, but I finished the final volume of a five-book dark epic fantasy series.

Perhaps I'll do a longer post about the process of writing book 5 at a later date, but for now let me just say that it was, in a word, tough. Dawnrise is right up there with Dark Immolation as far as the difficulty of the process goes, and perhaps even more difficult, although for different reasons.

However, it is now DONE. Or, at least, a revised-ish draft is done; as usual, I'll do another big revision and edits early next year. But the bones are there, and despite how much I hated myself as a writer and how much I hated this book as I was writing it, I (again, as usual) was pleasantly surprised by most of the book in the quick pass I did before sending it to my editor. That first-draft insecurity is pretty typical for most writers, it seems, including myself, but I was really feeling it with this book.

I am really glad it's done.

Also, I think you'll really like the ending.

Anyway, let's get some of the details out, as I do:

• Title: Dawnrise. This title has pretty much been written in stone since I titled the first novel of the series Duskfall. I'm a sucker for symmetry, so...yep :-).
• Version: 2.2.
• Total Word Count: 141,051. That's on the lower end of the other books in the series; the first-draft lengths of each of the previous novels were 162,000 (DF); 177,200 (DI); 131,600 (BR); and 187,000 (FtS).
• Chapters: 41, not including a prologue and an epilogue.
• Viewpoint Characters: Yeesh...let's see. All told, I'm looking at about 10 viewpoint characters. Some of them have smaller parts than others, but they're all pretty significant to the story.
• Start Date: January 2019
• End Date: 17 October 2019

And there you have it. If you're curious about some of the stats of the previous books in the series, here are some links:

DUSKFALL (also, incidentally, the first-ever post on this blog!)

DARK IMMOLATION

BLOOD REQUIEM

FEAR THE STARS

And, for now, I've got a few other projects calling my name that I've been really looking forward to tackling, so, if you'll excuse me...!

PARALLEL WORLDS: THE HEROES WITHIN available today!

Title says it all! Get your hands on this bestselling short story anthology today!

Okay, fine, I'll tell you a little bit more. I have a story in this awesome anthology available TODAY, along with some other awesome and bestselling authors, including but not limited to Jim Butcher, Jody Lynn Nye, Dave Butler, LJ Hachmeister, Christopher Ruocchio, and others! Seriously, there are a lot of fantastic stories in this one, so if you have a chance, you should check it out. It's available electronically now, and print should be available soon.

(My story is an original, non-Chaos Queen thing, presented as the blog of a young woman trying to survive in a zombie-ish apocalypse. I like it a lot.)

So check it out now!