Skip to main content

Mid-August Musings

I’ve got a birthday coming up in a couple of weeks, so I thought I’d share with you the big gift from the husband. The pictures have been sitting in my office for too long and I need to hang them, but I’ll get there eventually. For now, they’re resting comfortably next to the giant versions of the chibis I ordered on canvases which are also waiting to be tacked up somewhere. The chibis kind of stare at me while I write which is fun, but I also know Dra’Kaedan is up to no good and it’s distracting. 😜

I just ordered what I think is the last of the stuff I want to bring with me to GRL so that’s one thing I can check off my to-do list. We’ve made our hotel arrangements to spend a night in Arizona on our drive out but no final decision yet on whether we’ll stop anywhere on our way home. We may do something completely foreign to us both and wait until we get there to figure it out.

I’m still working on the same book. It’s 150k! I can however see a dim light at the end of the tunnel and while I had some struggles, I’ve gotten back on a decent track towards finishing it. My goal is to complete it before I leave for Minnesota and so far, I believe I will get there. Things are not going well there. As you may know from my previous post my best friend’s mother has end stage cancer and has only been healthy enough to have a single chemotherapy treatment. She’s refusing to budge from her house despite hallucinations and falling down a couple of times. There’s no getting her to eat and it’s becoming increasingly clear that we won’t have her long. It’s happening at a rate that I can honestly say I didn't expect but unfortunately life is often full of ugly surprises. Her family is doing an incredible job of being there for every appointment and dropping everything to run over to her house (she lives about an hour from all of her children) to attend to her. I’m incredibly proud of them and doing whatever I can to project positivity to bolster Patrick's spirits.

For myself my saving grace has always been my characters and I've started to look ahead to what’s next for D’Vaire. I skipped the short story that chronologically takes place before this novel so that’s my next project. It’s a good one for me since I’ve already got notes on it from when the idea came to me and if it’s anything like the holiday story you’ll get in December will come together quickly. The book that should come next is a complex one that will take a great deal of outlining and thought as it’s really unique to the series. Right now, with the epic one I’m working on and the stress in my life I’m finding that prospect rather daunting. And I did have an idea floating around that I might do before I dive into the next novel.

I’m also going to clue you in on who is in this monster of a novel I’m hoping to finish in about ten days when I'm done with it so wish me luck!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

It's great to be home.

The husband and I flew to Washington, DC for a long weekend and we had a wonderful trip. My niece and her family spent most of that time with us, and we’d gone entirely too long without seeing each other. On Sunday night, we had the awesome opportunity to attend an Iron Maiden concert and one of my favorite bands, Within Temptation, opened for them. While we had a fantastic time on our trip, sleep was not high on our priority list, so it’s going to take me a few days to get caught up. Beauty and Valor was released about twelve hours or so before I boarded my plane, and I really hope everyone enjoyed Preston and Ridgely’s story. Preston is an old character, and many details about where he came from and what race he belonged to changed, but the core of who he was never differed. He went through a few mates before I found the right one, and Ridgely was the perfect fit. Halfway through Gargoyle Birthright , that pair was distracting me, and there was no question that their book was re...

A sentinel and his dagger.

In my last blog, I talked about how D’Vaire was created. The first book was Dra’Kaedan and Brogan and I can’t wait for you to see their tale retold but let’s talk about what happened after the original story was completed. When I started the novel, I didn’t have an outline or anything. I wrote it by the seat of my pants and not even I knew how it would end. D’Vaire was supposed to be designed so that each one was a standalone title but when I was done there were so many things I didn’t have room to include. They would have to wait for the second which turned out to be Sentinel’s Dagger. Gavrael was the beginning of the sentinels. In fact, when I first started crafting his tale there was no Lich Sentinel. It was Gavrael (with Gedeon at his side) who was going to approach the Council to change the way the sentinels functioned within it. But I got sidetracked before his story could be completed by Chander and so things changed. (We’ll get to all that in a future post!) The thing you le...

Schereding in a new warlock book

Scheredin’s story wasn’t one I ever thought would come to fruition. As I created the D’Vaire universe, I put Noirin and Scheredin in there because they’re a vital part of my life and it was fun to add my gaming personas into my fantasy world. However, while Noirin’s path was chartered quickly thanks to Rafe and how his romance with Aleksander worked out, Scheredin didn’t cooperate in the slightest. His personality emerged as I poked and prodded at him, and he was full of surprises. I tried to pair him with multiple partners, and although I was pretty sure about his magic, I wasn’t positive he wanted to be a dark warlock until I wrote The Dragon Masquerade . But from the start I wanted Scheredin’s partner to have something to do with his gaming. For me, that was a neat way to honor the true Scheredin who exists virtually. Thankfully, Scheredin and Kieran liked the idea too, and when they were ready, the details spilled out in a rush. Their book wound up being one of those that was relat...