My blog has been poking at me for a couple of days now. "Write something," it hissed. "C'mon. You have ideas."

To which I stuck out my tongue and went back to working on my revisions of TOPAZ SKIES.

The revisions aren't done, not by a long shot, but I'm feeling pretty good about them. I have a better handle on my characters, I've gotten rid of some coincidental elements that were bugging me, and things are looking up.

So, short and sweet blog post today. Do you have any news to share?

I finished TOPAZ a couple of nights ago. It clocked in at 394 pages and 106,000 words, by far the longest piece I've ever written. It felt really, really good to write those last words. This was the first novel I've written where I wasn't worried it would be too short. The story just kind of kept going...and going...naturally. And it's the first novel I've written that feels like a Big Book. You know. Publishable.

It really is an awesome feeling.

And now I have to do revisions. I have a running list of major items that need to be addressed, so I'll tackle those first. For example, I'm moving the setting of the story to a small city in Canada instead of being in the US. Why? Well, I'm Canadian. Write what you know, and all that. Setting TOPAZ in an imaginary city in the US was an experiment, one that didn't really work for me. Other stuff I need to address includes strengthening the reasoning behind some of the early scenes. I'm a pantser, so I didn't really know what was going on when I wrote some of the first scenes where Faith meets up with Ezekiel and Urim. Now I do. And the list goes on...

After the big stuff, I'll focus on tightening up the writing. And then I think I'll release it into the wild of my beta readers' hands and see what suggestions come forth.

Happy writing, everyone!

Now that I'm two-thirds of the way through my second novel, I can say with absolute certainty that this is where I start to flounder. I did it with SENTINEL and it's happening again with TOPAZ. Anyone else experience the third-act slump, or am I weird?

I have this mental image in my head of my characters looking at me with puzzled looks on their faces, saying, "By this point, you should know who we are. Why is this so difficult?"

Why indeed?

Maybe it's the pressure to continue pushing my characters along their arcs from who they were to who they will be by the end of the book.

Maybe it's the realization that some of the ideas I had for this part of the book are just plain goofy now that I'm here.

Maybe the need to start tying up loose ends is a tad stifling.

Maybe I just need a break. Grr.

I've set myself a deadline to have the first draft of TOPAZ done by the end of the summer. Originally I wanted to have it revised and out on agent queries by then, but that's not going to happen. With this new timeframe, I'm hoping maybe it'll be out by the end of September. We'll see. If I can get my mind to feel less rust-filled, I think it's doable.

What do you do when you hit a bit of a slump?


TOPAZ status: Chapter 19 is done but I'm not happy with it. Grr.

I spent some time yesterday starting to read SENTINEL again. Thankfully, I can do so and not cringe, so that's a good sign. I do like the direction I started taking in in the third draft, even if it does mean extensive revisions. It will be a better story for it.

I also finished Chapter 15 of TOPAZ last night, but I'm not thrilled with it. Blargh.

I decided to spend a good chunk of the evening reading a new book I picked up: Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland. Good paranormal romance. She created an interesting world, where an infinite number of demons, descended from the fallen angels, roam the planet. Of course it's her main character's job to hunt them down. I ended up staying up to 1:30 a.m. to finish the damn thing. Ouch.

Anyway, after I turned off the light, I lay in bed thinking for awhile about SENTINEL. Although similar to Lori Handeland's book in that my MC is in charge of eradicating demons in her city, I realized I hadn't really fleshed out those demons beyond them just being bad. I also realized that the good-guy-killing-demons motif is getting almost as common as vampires.

Basically, I realized that although I (think I'm) a good writer and there are some unique elements to my book, it doesn't stand out enough. So I've spent some time brainstorming this morning, and I think I've come up with a solution. Now I just have to weave it into my existing story.


TOPAZ status: Chapter 15 done. Chapter 16 approaching, but I think I'll give it a few days.

SENTINEL status: Brainstorming and revisions. Yay.