divine guidance and writing

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I've had one of the nastiest colds of the last two years this past week. For a few days, I didn't get much of anything done. I was mostly resting and coughing. I'm still coughing, but I think I'm on the tail end of this after it started with a sore throat on Tuesday. I took off the rest of the week from the day job to rest, but the cold has persisted. Today, I have more energy and am coughing less, but there's still lots of crud draining down my throat from the sinuses. (Like you needed to know that.)

I'm hoping for a good night's sleep tonight and to be ready to get back to the day job tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. I've had to sleep on the recliner loveseat to be partly sitting up the last few nights because of the crud. I couldn't lay flat in bed or the coughing fits were worse.

While I've been sick, I've been surprised at the ideas flowing for writing when I wasn't resting, considering how fuzzy my head has been from the fatigue. I actually had some good writing, but this weekend I realized something wasn't right about what I had written. I've mentioned that I've also been putting in reading time of the series that's already written and published, but I had set that aside to recover from being sick. And as my devotion to my faith has grown, I've been offering my work to Our Lord in my morning prayers and throughout the day. This afternoon, I had a sudden prompt like I was being told to read, just read (my previous books). It was a strong push against my plans, because I thought I should be writing; but I listened, and not a whole page into reading from where I had left off, something I read struck me with what applied to a small issue in the current WIP (Book 20). I realized what I needed to do, fixed the issue, and was able to move the story forward again.

The prompt to read faded after that, but I know I should get back to that more fully. My focus is on finishing the first draft of Book 20, but I need to make time for reading The Rule of Yonder also. (I finished A New Beginning and uploaded a minorly updated version for the ebook already.) I need to finish reading what I had written in that first introduction of Zaer and Shen for Book 20.

And on that note, Book 20 is up to nearly 33,000 words and things are looking pretty dire for the characters. It'll be interesting to see how they get out of this situation.

Thanks for reading!

Exorcist Fr Dan Reehil Talks About HOPE In These Desperate Times!

If you're living in fear in this world, Fr. Reehil has some good advice for that:

Back to the beginning

It's been six years since I started writing the first book of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds. I went back to it a couple of years ago, intending to fix any issues I found, but that's as far as I read. I was too focused on writing.

Now that I'm nearly 4/5 done with the series (will be once Book 20 is done), I think it's time to go back and read everything straight through. Along the way, I'll fix any editing issues that arise, although the books shouldn't require much. Mostly, I need this as a refresher. It's hard to keep it all straight after writing nearly twenty books in six years, even with a wiki file (aka series bible) and these being short novels.

Another reason for the re-read is that I write for myself, so I can go back and read the work and enjoy the journey again, although I also want to write for an audience besides myself, so that is at the back of my mind in writing. Mostly, I want to write something that I'll enjoy going back to, something that's fun and exciting and even clean, a series that harkens back to the days of that type of science fiction series, before sex and vulgarity took over our media. Before the 2000s, certain things weren't allowed in entertainment and a good story had be told above all else. Back then, good stories were told without the shock value of graphic violence, gore, and sex that we have so much of in our entertainment today. That only detracts from a good story, in my opinion. If you need those elements to keep your audience, you're not telling a compelling story. (Star Wars had none of those but became a force to be reckoned with... until it started to modernize.)

I explain a lot of what inspired this series in the foreword of the first book, A NEW BEGINNING, and why I am writing it, so I won't repeat it here, but this has turned into a more fulfilling project than I could have anticipated. I've started reading and don't want to quit, which means I'm not bored with it. 😁 That's good, because I still have a bit over five more books to write. It also means that it's been so long since I started this project that I see it with fresh eyes. In that, I've caught a few things to tweak. I'll update ebooks as I go. The print books will require a bit more work to update the interiors.

I still have a couple years of writing before the series will be completely finished, since I write it all myself--no AI and no ghostwriters--and I am not a full-time writer. This is a good point to reread it all. I've done that with some of my longer novels in the past at about the same point to refresh my view of the story flow so the climax would bring all the necessary pieces together with the right pacing. This is no different, just much MUCH bigger! (In relative size, so far, I've published somewhere around 800,000 words total in Books 1-17. Compared to a series of eight 100,000 word novels (aka "doorstoppers"), this has many more distinct plots and subplots in the overall arc.)

In the meantime, I'm also working on finishing the final segment of Book 20. It was because of this that I decided to reread--I need a refresher on what I've written about Zaer and Shen since I'm finally expounding on their past together in this episode, DARKEST DEPTHS. That made me realize I need to get an overall view of the entire series so far, before moving into the final segment of it.

I hope you're enjoying the series as much as I am.

Thanks for reading!

My blog, my way

Anyone reading my book series will be familiar with one of the characters' mantra of "My ship, my rules."

The same can be said of my blog. I write what I feel like sharing in this space, just like anyone else does with their blogs. If you wish to know who I am, you will learn that here.

My faith influences my writing to varying degrees. I don't preach in my fiction, but I do include aspects of my faith in the characters and the settings. My Catholic religion has been a saving grace for me in our deteriorating world. Before you criticize, I invite you to explore the truth of what the Catholic faith really is, not what you believe it is. You might be surprised at what you discover, such as I've shared on this blog. Try listening to any number of exorcists and Catholic apologetics, or even the conversion stories or archeological proof that the Bible chronicles real history that I have included in the listings on the Faith Resources tab.

This is my blog, my story. My religion is a part of who I am, and for readers who want to know what inspires my writing, my deepening closeness to Jesus Christ through Our Blessed Mother is a big part of who I am. I have found peace and joy and experienced increasing knowledge of who God really is; and I wish that more people could see what I now see. I share what I find helpful in the hopes that others will begin to see truth, and I pray that people's eyes are opened to the incredible reality that hides from those who don't know of or don't accept their blindness to the spiritual realm.

Along with writing updates and tidbits about my stories, I will continue to share on my blog personal items that interest me, including videos and expressions of my religion, my faith, which is a part of me and is infused into my stories. I will no longer hide my Catholic faith, my love of God, in the shadows like it doesn't exist.

In my virtual house, I do things my way. My blog, my rules.

God bless!

Cats and more

Just for fun, because I haven't done something like this in a while...

the oldest two (12 & 13+ years)

the old man - my prayer buddy
and writing buddy

peekaboo! (the youngest - 9 yrs old)
a rare brown tuxedo (not black)

a dragonfly at the window - they've exploded
in numbers in the last month

a wild turkey family crossing through our backyard after
some heavy rain

All three enjoying a nice day
in their catio from Habitat Haven

Now that I have your attention with all the cats, dragonflies, and turkeys, I'll just say that the writing is progressing, although I'm hitting one of those points of stumbling on the plot a bit. Book 20 is over 27K words and I am having to reconsider some ideas to make this work. I'm planning on editing and publishing Book 18 this winter. I would prefer to finish the first draft of Book 20 before doing that; but, even if I don't, I will get Book 18 of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds out before Christmas.