Writing plans update

This is like a Balance Sheet, being a snapshot where my income and expenses (creativity and time) are looking at this moment. It can't take into account what the future actually holds, but I can do my best to anticipate it.

With that said, here are the items I will try to make happen in the next few years:

1. Finish the first draft of Awakening (Shadow Realm Sage #1) by the end of February...if I can quiet finding distractions like organizing/cleaning my house and coming up with cover ideas.

2. While Awakening stews on the backburner, finish writing Nemesis (Starfire Angels: Revelations Book 3) by midsummer 2015.

3. After finishing a first draft of Nemesis, return to Awakening to edit and publish. With the cover done, that will be the final touch, along with editing the description.

4. After publishing Awakening, begin writing Enlightenment (Shadow Realm #2) and try to finish a first draft by Thanksgiving.

5. By the beginning of December, begin editing on Nemesis to publish before Christmas 2015.

6. If Enlightenment is done, begin writing Ascension (SRS #3), otherwise finish Enlightenment.

7. After finishing a first draft of Ascension, set it aside to stew and return to Enlightenment for editing and publishing by summer 2016.

8. Finish a first draft of Eternal before December 2016 and edit and publish Ascension by Christmas 2016.

9. After publishing Ascension, continue either a) the next Demon Age novel or b) begin the Starfire Angels: Apocalypse series.

Nemesis will be the last Starfire Angels title for a while. I need to develop what I want to do for Apocalypse, which I anticipate to be a series of novellas released every 4-6 weeks beginning in 2017 sometime (depending on whether I work on another project before it or not). I'd like to do a whole year of this subseries of my popular Starfire Angels series. It will reintroduce the world and it will stand alone on its own with mostly new characters. I'd like to make them novellas that narrowly-focus on aspects of the consequences of everything that has come before, but still be a part of an overall arc. I set up this world to be BIG with many ways to play in it, and I'm going to use it... You better believe it!

Sometime in 2018, I'll have time to actually reassess my goals and ideas again, probably continuing the Demon Age series and starting yet another new series...who knows?

In the meantime, I've been tinkering with more covers. Since the abstract covers for the Dark Angel Chronicles seem to work best, I'm sticking with that idea for the Shadow Realm Saga. I created one book cover and, a couple days later, tinkered with the notion of another to see how well the theme held up. I have my first two covers:

and

Some tweaking may occur before publication, but they won't change much. I like these and they portray the stories I have outlined. The main character's name is Lilly, hence the lilly in the first cover. In the second, she'll be in a fighting mood, hence the sword. (I created the lilly a few weeks ago from a simple stock image. The sword was the only other stock art. Everything else was fonts and Photoshop tools.)

I've put up placeholders on the series page on my website (melanienilles.com/shadow-realm-saga.html), but I already have an idea for Eternal (SRS #4). Now, I just need to consider Nemesis and Ascension and I'll have covers for the next two years/five books.

That's what's been keeping me busy, and these artistic endeavors are what's been keeping me from writing at the same pace that I was before buckling down to redesign the Dark Angel Chronicles covers. Awakening is over 64,000 words right now with plenty more story to develop. Back to work I go.