Musings of a Frustrated Writer

It's an exciting month here, with Raven Thrall (Legends of the Ceo San Book 1) just weeks away from its official release. 😰😁 (<-- that's me, nervous and excited all at the same time).

The funny part is my mind has been mostly on future projects, including revising the novelette Healer's Sacrifice (another Ceo San book) and going back to work on a vampire urban fantasy I originally drafted before Raven Thrall.

This story, originally called Strange Bedfellows and more recently renamed Blood Mastery, might be the proverbial thorn in my side as a writer, but I'm determined to get it right before I even think of releasing it. It's been rewritten once already and has so much backstory that I realized that it has become a plethora of "telling" (a big writer no-no)--all to explain that backstory.

After throwing up my hands with it this morning, I realized that the backstory (starting as far back as ancient Greece and Italy in the 1400s, where my main vampire, Nica, got her start) is indeed more interesting, and the modern story would be all the richer for showing it.

So, I quickly mapped out a short three-book series starting with Nica's origins. It will be likely renamed again, something along the lines of The Vampire Wars (although that one is probably already taken). I'm not ready to jump right in, though. I'd like to let it stew some more in my thoughts for a while and instead get back to Mariah and her story.

I wrote about 16k words for Revelation of the Dragon during National Novel Writing Month, and I'm ready to get back into that story and that world.  If all goes according to plan, readers of Raven Thrall will want to read the sequel soon, so the quicker I can get it written and revised the better. I've already got a basic map of the complete five-book arc for Legends of the Ceo San Series.

I'm also playing around with the idea of getting the audio book for Raven Thrall produced.

Are you a writer or a reader? I'd love to hear from you about your struggles with series. We have to know we're not alone, right? 😹