Hey, everybody. Long time no talk, yeah? *nervous chuckle*
So, um, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, whether
you celebrate or not, and I hope that the very rapidly approaching new year
treats you better than the old.
Speaking of the end of the year, many of you may be aware
that I made public noises with my mouth (or rather fingers, I guess, but let’s
not muddle our metaphors right out of the gate) that Amra #5, The Thief Who Went To War, would be out
by the end of the year.
I, uh, I’m not gonna be wrapping this bad boy up in the next
36ish hours. That’s not happening. I was wrong about that one. So very, very wrong. And I want to apologize.
Not as an excuse (unlike most of the times I say that in my
life, this time I actually mean it) but rather just to let you know I haven’t
been goofing off, we’re currently on the third
first draft of this book. I haven’t been stricken by writer’s block; words have
been coming out. They’ve just been the wrong ones. Lots and lots and lots of wrong words. So many initially
promising but ultimately dreadful plot-related decisions. Allow me to
illustrate where I’ve been at with this book for the last half a year or so:
 |
| it me |
It ain’t been pretty.
When I first started writing Amra’s misadventures, I was
this happy, innocent idiot. Nobody knew me or her, and it didn’t much matter in
the grand scheme of things if what I wrote was great or dreadful. I didn’t think
much about it; I just wrote.
Things have changed. Oh, I’m still an idiot, but now I’m the
kind of idiot that has juust enough self-awareness to worry about the
consequences of my idiocy. In other words, I really want to get this book right,
and the first two drafts weren’t. Really, truly, no foolin' not good enough to publish.
I’ve literally had to go back and re-teach myself how to plot, (yes, this will be my eighth
full-length novel; I wasn’t joking about the idiot part) but Amra 5, Version 3
is now coming along more smoothly. Everything seems to be working at last, and
it is my top priority. I’m not going to open my big idiot mouth and give another
possibly wrong time frame for its release, but I’ll be giving weekly updates on
writing progress on the blog for those who’d like to check in.
So, to sum up: I’m an idiot, Amra 5 isn’t ready, but things
are looking better and you can expect weekly reports on progress here on the blog.
Happy New Year, everybody!
