I still haven’t finished plotting this thing! But I’m getting closer. I’ve plotted the ending, so I’m now working backwards and forwards to connect the end and the middle. Writing will commence whenever I finish. (I’m currently focusing more on a sort of freelance programming project.)

While I still haven’t finished plotting, my friend and I did finally finish our co-authored short stories (one turning out to be a novelette). I’m really pleased with how they came out; they are definitely not stories I could’ve written on my own. Our co-writing process took a bit too long (almost eight months for two stories), but they are much more polished than anything I’ve written on my own.

Still plotting away on this novel. I spent yesterday plotting my way through the novel’s midsection; I think the midpoint came together very well. The four main characters are following their own paths, which all then collide at the midpoint. I’ll be very excited to actually start writing! But first I must plot out the novel’s second half, which will also be complicated due to the attention needed to make the four character story lines collide once more in an exciting climax.

I had to restart plotting Stormground from scratch. My previous plot featured a character who just wasn’t working, just wasn’t fitting in with the other characters and whose actions and plot arc were making everything else difficult. So he’s out. (He may show up later in the series, or get his own series.) He’s been replaced with another character who I think is a better fit for the spirit of the book.

Anyway, I’m still plotting. This is one of the most complicated stories I’ve ever plotted. (Not that I’ve plotted enormous amounts of material.) There are four main characters whose storylines all affect each other’s. I’m giving each character about sixteen scenes, four for each of the story’s four acts. Since each scene will likely be its own chapter, the entire book will have about sixty-four chapters. Each chapter should be around one to two-thousand words, so we’re looking at a novel between 64K and 128K words, though of course I’m going to try to keep it on the shorter side.

So far, I’ve only finished plotting the first act. I’m working on plotting the second act right now.

Woohoo, the beginning of updates for a new novel!

Stormground is my tentative title for the first book in my new fantasy series, Moonrise Ink. I’m still in the plotting phase, which is proving tricky. The plot is more complicated than both The Dark Wizard and the previous incarnation of Moonrise Ink. The last novels I plotted that were this complicated were left incomplete. So we’ll see how it goes. There are four point-of-view characters, all of them teenagers, and I’m guessing this will be more of a YA / adult novel, not middle grade. Anyway, their storylines all weave in and out of each other, so it takes a good bit of organizing to make sure everything fits together. I’m in the scene-planning phase of plotting, which means I’m deciding what each scene will consist of and how they’ll be organized. It’s easy to start imagining how a scene might play out, and it’s tempting to rush through this phase just to get to the writing. I’m restraining myself though.