Return to the Journey

All righty, then! I've sidetracked long enough! It's time to return to my little story. It's getting close to done so why don't I just move along. Now let's see. Where was I? Ah, yes. The completion of the first draft. Right.

So, let's see. I'd finished the first draft; it was all written out in pen. Hundreds of dog-eared pages covered in enough ink to paint a horse. Or two.

It was approaching Christmas. It was a cold, soggy Christmas, as I recall. Snow up the wazoo. That's uncomfortable. My lovely Cori and I were travelling, that year, to visit family. In fact some very special people, Cori's mother and father, drove from Washington DC to meet us in Toronto.

As a side note, our little girl was one that year. Travelling with a one year old child is the height of hilarity (can you see the sarcasm oozing out of your screen?) but we managed.

The moment we left our house, I started getting jittery. My manuscript was sitting in there, all alone, with no one to take care of it. But my lovely Cori was adamant: no thinking about it! It was just a few days, but it really affected me. Probably too much; I probably should have made an appointment with a psychiatrist.

In Toronto, my in-laws (wonderful people!) met us at the hotel where we would all spend the night. Nice place: not too fancy-schmancy but certainly not a run-down cockroach farm either. In their room, they presented us with some early Christmas presents.

And there it was: my shiny new laptop. To be honest, it's a netbook, a little guy that's just perfect for toting around everywhere I go. I was, of course, elated. Ecstatic. Beside myself! (What a silly expression...) At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to start writing. I still have it. I've written both books, the majority of my third book, and this blog on this netbook.

And that's when it came home. Hundreds of hand written pages. Hundreds of them. I had no scanner. Even if I did, my handwriting had been so bad that any character recognition software would have either laughed at me, or had a psychotic meltdown. Chances are, it would have tried to murder me in my sleep. With a pen of course.

The rest of the trip was very nice, I suppose. But I admit I was quite preoccupied. I wanted to get back to the book. At the same time, the thought of painstakingly transferring it all to the digital world caused a certain trepidation...

Aw jeez, who am I kidding? It gave me nightmares!

But more on that later. I have a book to try to finish at some point in the near future.

Book Three--And I'm Still Alive

Okay! I've got the climax of the third book of Rites of Ascension done and it went right where I expected it to go! I don't think anyone will be disappointed. A bit surprised but not disappointed. I think, when it's (finally) done, it will be a good finale.

I was going to post a short excerpt but it's too raw yet. I need to fix up the middle--the pacing is jerky and I'm not happy with some of my phrasing. Well, without getting too involved in the whole thing, there's still a lot of work to get it right. But it's a lot closer to store shelves...or Amazon's digital shelves anyway.

Title-wise, I'm toying with the idea of simply calling it Ascension. It's not bad; it certainly works as a working title. I'll keep a thought on it.

What about the future? Well, when this series is (finally!) complete, I think I'm going to hold off on another series for a while. It has been draining, and pulling together the threads in this third book has been surprisingly difficult. I suddenly have a lot more respect for those writers who pound out series--Robert Jordan (R.I.P, sir) comes to mind.

I have two ideas for single volume works that I'm going to explore. One of them is in my comfort zone--another epic style fantasy. The other is an (gasp!) urban fantasy! Which one, which one...

Well, let's get this third Rites of Ascension out and then we'll see what we'll see.

Oh, and by the way, I'm alive. Thumbs up!

Thanks folks! Talk to you soon!