Just a brief update this month! My biggest recent writing news, of course, was the launch of my newest novel, The Princess Behind Thorns, on April 4th.  Still very exciting to have that out in the world!

The second book in the series is currently with beta-readers, so I’ve been turning to Book 3, which I drafted in November, 2022, for NaNoWriMo.  It’s nice to work on a book that was drafted relatively recently, compared to the first two in the series.  It’s also a departure from the previous two in shifting perspective to two supporting characters, Elena and Henry.  I’ve done an initial read-through and plan to go back now for some more extensive changes.  The novel is essentially a heist story, and I need to introduce a few more co-conspirators and work out a few more details of the heist!

That will likely be my focus for at least the next month or so, and then I’ll either get back to Thorns 2 – or maybe look ahead to Thorns 4 briefly?  We’ll see!  Lots of books in play right now!

I’ve had lots of writing progress since my last update, so that’s exciting to be sharing.  As you hopefully saw, The Princess Behind Thorns (Thorns 1) will be published in just over a week!  The book will be out on April 4th; the Kindle is already available for pre-order, and it will be available in paperback and hardback too.

I also finished my current round of revisions for Thorns 2, and sent that off to beta-readers last week.  I wrote the first draft in November of 2019, so it’s really great to hit this point finally.  The draft will be with beta-readers for a couple months, and I plan on more revision in the summer.  So hopefully it won’t be too many months before I can share this one with everyone too!

For now, I’m doing some revision on my collaborative novel, Pesto, Pirouettes and Potions…which has also been in process for a few years (there’s a theme here, and it’s very much pandemic-related!)  That’s a relatively brief project for now, and then I’ll be on to revisions of Thorns 3!  This one was drafted just last November, so it’s a comparatively recent project.  It’s exciting to be onto something new, so I’m looking forward to diving back into that.

I expect to be in this series for a while…but it feels good to be moving on to later parts of the story!

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. Continue reading “Writing Update (February, 2023)” →

Happy New Year! I’ve been continuing along with my writing projects as we start into 2023. I wrote the last (final written, not final in order!) chapter of Thorns 1, and am doing my final-final-I-really-mean-it pass through. I printed it to read out loud to my husband, and am jotting the stray notes as I go.  It’s almost entirely things like fixing a repeated word or cutting an unnecessary sentence, so this really is very close to done now!

Meanwhile, I’m also revising Thorns 2, which was originally written way back for NaNoWriMo 2019 (!)  I’m keeping most of what I have but adding in a few chapters in the first third, and I may do some more substantive changes to the end, which I think needed a little more excitement.  Right now I’m building in some threads in the first part that should add some extra danger and tension…but I don’t want to be too specific because, you know – spoilers!

Revision is going a little slowly but it’s moving along so I’m feeling good about that.  Maybe I’ll finally get this published four years after I originally wrote it!

So nothing too monumental to report – just rolling along with the current projects.  But hopefully I’ll have some bigger announcements (like publishing dates!) coming soon.

After a very busy November, writing has slowed down a bit in December.  However, I did finish the first draft of my NaNoWriMo project, otherwise known as Thorns Saga #3!  I did 50,000 words during November, and finished out the project with only another 5,000 words.  I plan to expand significantly in the revision process, so after I finished drafting I read back through it and made notes on additions and new details.  Not sure when I’ll actually do the revisions, but at least I have the plans for them.

After that, I turned back to Thorns #1, to hopefully finally get this finished.  I have one chapter to write still – my most recent revision pass involved moving things around and I need a new chapter to fill a hole, and it gives me the chance to intro some characters who will be more important in later books.  So that’s what I’m working on right now.  Then one more complete review and we should be about there!  I’m hoping to get this one out into the world in the first half of next year.

With that in mind, I’ve been working on a different project that’s not strictly writing, but is related – I’ve been doing cover designs for all five planned books in the series.  So far they’re turning out very nice, so I’ve been enjoying that!  Can’t share them for a while though… 😉

I’m aiming to finish the new chapter in Thorns #1 plus a few other edits by the end of the year, then plan to primarily work on Thorns #2.  Lots of drafts in process!  Hopefully I can get some complete soon. 🙂