Writing work is rolling along on both of my current projects – I’m down to the last few edits for Thorns 1, and may be finally finished by the end of the long President’s Day weekend.  Here’s hoping!  And then I should have another post soon about when you can expect to read it.

Revisions on Thorns 2 slowed down, partially because I pivoted back to Thorns 1 and partially because my day job sent me to our Annual Conference for a week.  It was a good opportunity to do the relatively easy work of typing in edits to Thorns 1, but the conference and catching up afterwards halted Thorns 2 for about ten days.  I’m trying to get back to it now though, and I’m about 2/3 through the draft.  I was aiming to finish by the end of the month – I probably won’t manage that, but I don’t think I’ll miss it by much.

Once I finish this pass of Thorns 2, I plan to send it off to beta-readers, and while that’s with them I’m going to turn back to Thorns 3, my NaNo project this past year.  I’ve been on the first two books of this series for a very, very long time, so I’m excited about getting them completed and moving on to the much more recently written Thorns 3 and 4.  Even though it’s the same series, they focus on different characters, so it’s going to feel much fresher, I think.

So this month’s update is mostly carrying on – but we’re getting places.  How about an excerpt, until I can get you the entire novel?

Movement out of the corner of Rose’s eye drew her attention away from the lions, back to the hedge of thorns, and her breath caught.  The hedge was growing.  The guards had retreated, and now it was filling in the opening where she had walked through.  The branches writhed and twisted and continued expanding, growing in height and breadth until it was no longer a low, inconsequential hedge but a towering wall eight or ten feet high of thickly interlaced branches, spiked with thorns.

Her throat tightened.  Of course, if Xevrix was involved, of course it was magical thorns.  But seeing them, seeing those branches twist and shift, triggered a deep-seated horror she couldn’t reason away.