Book 3, The Demon in Me is 29% complete, which is close to 1/3rd. The rough draft on this one is pretty clean so far. I don’t anticipate a blockage, but one never knows for sure. I’m about 2,500 words ahead of schedule, but that’s not much. I always seem to start ahead of schedule as I nail down the first bunch of scenes and then run out of steam toward the middle or sometimes at the end. This time, though, I have an ending that is firmly in mind. I’m dying to skip ahead and write those scenes, but I’ll resist. I don’t want to go out of order too much because then I end up with details that don’t connect right. So, this time, I’m trying to write the story close to writing into the dark. I’ve been circling back and fixing any details that I needed for the story and keeping the rough draft as clean as possible. the only difference between actual writing into the dark and what I’m doing is that I have quite a bit of my story ideas jotted down and I’m following them in the order that I planned them.
According to my schedule (which is nothing more than an estimate based on me writing 2k per weekday and 3k per weekend day), I should have the rough draft done by mid-September. Then there’s the read-out-loud and editing of story problems. I wish I could get this published in September, but the realist in me says the first week of October. That would put in on schedule to complete 4 books in one year.
On another note, I hope you’ve enjoyed the mini-stories I’ve posted. I have a few more in the can that are ready to post. They go out each night after I finish my writing session. I need to get a few more ready to go. I’m trying to only spend time that I would not normally spend on the novel to prevent myself from writing these stories with all of my writing time. If anything has to be sacrificed, it’ll be the mini-stories. With that said, I have a whole bunch of stories about my Navy life that are entertaining. Including stuff like the crossing the line ceremony, also known as Wog Day. Of course, I have to strip out the names of the “guilty” on any of my stories and I have to avoid anything classified. I’ll just pretend I never knew anything that was classified and adjust the story around things I know should not be published. I’m sure there are people out there going “Oh, darn, he’s leaving out the good stuff.” Not to worry, there is a lot of “good stuff” that isn’t in the classified section of my life.
If I run out of entertaining life stories, I have ideas for some Sci-Fi stuff that I’m hacking on the side. I might be able to put together a short book-sized story that I can break into scenes and post on this blog one at a time. I’d like to do a short story every month and submit them to Asimov’s magazine. The rejects can get posted here. I just haven’t decided what to write yet.