Final Four

I'm not talking basketball. Besides, that's done for this year.

I'm talking the final four books of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds. I can't believe it! Four more books to write and it's done. All this work, this whole journey with these characters... will be finished. I started out with ideas for 30+ possible episode plots but knew that 24-26 would be a good run (and eventually settled on 25), based on a 22-26 episode season of most TV shows from the era before streaming services. Back when we had to record on VHS. Yes, I'm that old. Actually I remember when VHS first became popular, winning out over Beta.

Yikes! How the years have gone by.

How this series has gone by! I started writing Forgotten Worlds in 2018 and released A NEW BEGINNING on April 4, 2019. I'm six years into it and about a year and a half left to go, probably two years until the last book is actually published.

The final four books yet to write.

I finished reading Book 20 & 21 to refresh what I had done with those and make any notes to address when I dig into editing them. The biggest possible issue is that I introduced a new character in Book 21. No one died this time or died and came back. (Did you see that pattern with Ann's and Alric's additions? And they both have "A" names. That's not the case this time.) This new character flipped my plans a bit.

Alric was unplanned too, actually. I just thought it was time to switch things up when he came onto the scene in Book 18. I hope no one hates me for what happened to Vel.

Anyway, this new character changes my plans for the rest of the series a little bit. I've had to consider how I could make use of him or if I need to use him at all. Spoiler alert--yes, I will use him. His addition provides an opportunity for situations I couldn't have done without him like Alric did for Book 21.

I was having trouble figuring out how to use the new character and during one of the three best places for the creative juices to flow (walking, driving, or shower), the spigot of creativity opened... in the shower. I figured out exactly what Book 22 is going to be while moving the series forward in the way I had planned but with some modifications to incorporate the new guy.

Once 22 is done, only three to go. It's not just the final four but the final countdown.

(The music is catchy, but the song actually makes no sense.)

Hang in there a little longer. It's going to be epic!

Thanks for reading!

Sacred Music artist exposes Hollywood Soundtracks

Very interesting, and be sure to watch until the end if you like science fiction. 😏

Catching up

It's been less than two weeks since I (finally!) published All the King's Men. In the time since, I've been reading through the next two books to catch up before starting the writing of Book 22.

When I catch up on my progress, I do some editing and make notes of anything I think needs particular attention for the deep dive edits (aka developmental edits). My assessment so far is that Darkest Depths won't likely need much rewriting. However, Armor will be a beast to edit. It's a complicated back and forth story that gave me some issues in writing it and, although not as long as Book 19 (the longest of all the books in this series and one that feels like it could have been written to be twice as long, but I didn't want to get over complicated on the story). Book 21 has a complex setup of present action amid flashbacks to previous scenes in the series and some new flashbacks, as well as flashbacks to the setup, such as I used in Book 4. It's a weird hodge-podge of flashbacks and very intricate timing on those flashbacks so I don't give away the plan too soon. It's complicated, but that's why it will require some big time editing when the time comes.

For now, I'm making notes (using Word comments and a separate notes file to address more detailed thoughts) for editing consideration. I may attempt some rewrites on Book 21 now to address the bigger issues I already see so I have less to do when the time comes for full-on edits, but I want to get back to writing too.

I hope to start working on Book 22 by the end of next week. With 25 books planned in this series, I'm in the homestretch now. Book 22 will still be a bit of a side adventure, although those are now all focused on reaching the series climax. A few of the early books were more for fun and getting to know characters and the setting (social-cultural, political, trade, species, technology, etc.), everything from this point is targeted towards the finale, like most of the books in the series. I describe each book as a chapter of one large book (like Babylon 5). They all build on one another, even the few thrown in just for the fun of it. As L'Ni tells Nya, I use everything; there's something in each book that advances the series. No story is wasted.

And for fun, something extraordinary happened at our house this morning--all four cats lined up for the perfect picture! This has never happened before, but the spring return of birds to the yard caught their attention so all had to get a good look.

Meow!

Thanks for reading!

It's here! Book 19 is available!

That was a test of attention and persistence.

Book 19 is done! I had a lot of rewriting on this one. I knew it would be trouble when I wrote the first draft. Making the setting plausible--where technology doesn't work--is a difficult bit of explanation. I went back and forth on that every other editing round. I finally settled on a little bit of mystery. It doesn't have to be fully explained. It just has to be plausible. Good enough.

I enjoyed the story, but I found a lot of issues in editing needing rewriting. And I'd go back and forth a bit on some small issues with each round of edits. I also would find my usual issues and hope that I caught all of those.

In the end, it's MUCH better than the first draft! If you could compare the first draft to the final draft, you'd see the dramatic difference in quality. First drafts are getting the ideas down and all the pieces in some format or another. However, there are always word choices to consider. And I caught a few inconsistencies to fix. I hope I didn't miss anything. 😔

Sometimes, as with this, details change in big ways, but most of the time, those are good enough to need only minor tweaks. This story had a lot of unusual pieces to it, especially since the secondary characters of the world became almost equal to the series characters in terms of importance in this. Developing those characters adequately and their lives required a lot of work.

In any case, I'm glad it's done, although I worry about what else I should fix. Art is never finished, only abandoned. I would go on fixing forever and never publish if I didn't stop myself at some point.

ALL THE KING'S MEN is done! The ebook will be appearing in the next few days at online retailers.

Happy reading!

The Church & Science: Galileo - Living Divine Mercy (EWTN) Ep. 185 w/ Fr...

A bit of the Catholic church's promotion of science at the beginning of this, dispelling lies that say otherwise.

He Thought It Was Just Art—Until Souls in Hell Cried for Justice

This explains why I believe graphic sex in books (among other sins) will lead writers (and others in the entertainment world who promote such things) to hell. They are leading readers to sensual lusts, which damns the creator's soul by damning the souls of their audience.

And if readers and watchers (of videos) engage with such immodest, impure, etc. works, they will condemn their own souls. For the creator, it's multiplied by what they do to all those souls of their audience. It's not puritanical. It's not prudish. It's just fact. We don't get to change God's rules. He is outside time and space, therefore never changing. These are His rules, not mine. Disobey at your own peril (eternal damnation).

You can read more details on the sin of scandal here. There are many different ways this applies in our lives, but guard you senses and restrain your tongue (or fingers on the keyboard) to avoid this.

8 Embarrassing Mistakes When Writing Child Characters

8 Ways Your Writing Reveals that You Don't Understand Women

9 Male Character Mistakes That Scream “A Woman Wrote This”

Not what I expected

This manuscript is really making me work to fine-tune it. I knew it was rough, but I didn't imagine it would need this much work!

Part of the delay was trying some ideas that didn't work for certain points of the subplots, so I had to change some things back. In other aspects, the smaller plot holes revealed themselves from behind the curtain that was pulled away during previous big edits. I feel like this will never end. The problem is that it's improved so much that it makes me wonder what else I'm missing. I hate that feeling.

I'm midway through round four of edits, and Book 19 is finally having the fat trimmed. I'm at the point of being ready to be done, but these changes are more than a few words here there as I had expected at this point. Unfortunately, it's still in the stage of major trimming. Copyedits will require one more round.

Help! I feel like I'm stuck in editing Groundhog Day!