A brief update

I've been busy this past week, and preoccupied.

I haven't been around here in the last week, not even with videos, but there's a reason for that.

While I have done some writing, I've had other projects of higher priority. Nevertheless, I do leave time each day for some writing. Whether that happens and how much is another issue, but that's the story of my writing life at every stage.

Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds Book 24 is up to 33,000 words presently. Switching between character POVs has been a bit difficult in this book and takes a bit for me to gain momentum each time I switch, which is happening about every chapter. That's the big issue affecting the writing pace of this particular book.

I could finish by the end of the month, if the writing picks up the pace again, but I've also been preoccupied with a major project that has me excited, and even a little frightened, because I'm going out on a HUGE limb with this. I'll just say that I've filed as an LLC for the business involved for personal asset and liability protection.

We also now have our garden planted and growing. This year, hubby decided to use cardboard to control the weeds, because it keep moisture in, blocks sun so weeds don't grow so readily between rows, and is compostable (with the shipping tape removed). So far, it seems to be working. It makes weeding the garden much easier. We'll see how the rest of the summer goes.

In another month, I'll have peas to shell and freeze. Already, I've had the first pruning of the rhubarb, but it wasn't as much as I expected. I should have known better with all the blossoms it was sending up. Those ruin the stalk harvest. Dill is starting to head. I've had a few strawberries. Corn and cucumbers are coming up nicely. And our grape plants are loaded with grape clusters; oodles of them! We just have to watch out for the cutworms again this year. They've been appearing the last two summers. Fortunately, hubby saw them before they caused any damage.

That's where I am on the writing and on life projects.

Stay tuned! There's much more to come.

God bless!

Back on track

That break to edit and publish Book 21 was exactly what I needed!

It has yet to fail... taking a break from writing when the gears of creativity get stuck.

Dropping the writing on Book 23 to edit Book 21 of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds was exactly what I needed to get those gears grinding again. I've been back at it for the last week, and the transformation is complete. All the rewriting that was making it take forever was laying down the tracks to take it forward.

However, I was still having trouble before stepping away. Now, coming back to it after the editing and publication of Book 21 took my mind off Book 23 enough to allow me a fresh perspective. That distance allowed my mind to be able to let go of the wrong ideas and better develop what worked. The last remnants of the original opening are gone and the story has a strong opening hook. It isn't immediate action but more subdued that way, although it's coming. You can't have one of these books without lots of sci-fi action!

I can't wait to share this one--and I say that about all of them--but this answers a LOT of questions in the setup to the finale, which will be a two-parter, although in complete episodes. It's a bit hard to explain how that works, but you'll have to trust me that it will work.

I'm presently working my way to where I left off, rewriting where I need to make it all blend seamlessly, and will end Book 23 with a much stronger plot that I had originally, one that meets my standards for the series. I'm quite happy with it now, if you couldn't tell.

Once I'm done with this, I'll jump right into writing Book 24.

And I've also added a description for Book 22 to the series listing on this blog and to my website. You can check it out to see what comes next. 

Finally, I've added the latest omnibus as an ebook and am working on the paperback. (I noticed some issues with copying and pasting from Word to Pages, which is where I set up the paperback and will now be going through the first three collections in paperback to clean up any similar issues in those. 😩)

That's it for now.

(The plan is that by the end of 2027, the whole series will be published.)

Thanks for reading!

Reality is weirder than fiction...

The weirdest thing happened at church this evening. (One of the parishes in town has a 5:15 pm weekday mass that I attend.)

Two of my characters walked into real life! Raea and Elis

Okay, so they weren't exact matches, but I had to fight to keep my attention on mass when I saw this young couple who couldn’t have been older than preschoolers when I wrote the first Starfire Angels book. The young woman had long brown hair and the man had black wavy, shortish hair. He wasn’t tall and skinny like my dark angel of the books, but close enough to make me question what reality I was in.

I posted this on Substack and had a comment about my characters going to mass. That isn't much different than the Dark Angel Chronicles books, however. As I replied, "One of them does in the books too. In the series, an old Catholic widow provides a home for the young man while he’s on earth and knows his secret, and he drives her to mass and helps her like an adopted son."

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In other news, Book 21 of Forgotten Worlds is almost done! I thought it was done until I started noticing I was still making cuts, so I decided to read it one more time to make sure I don't leave any mistakes. All the major edits are done. This is the final round. I can't do more.

Within the next week, I will publish this one and get back to writing.

Thanks for reading.

God bless!

time for a change

I have decided that I need to set aside Book 23 of Forgotten Worlds where it's at (close to the end, as in right before the climax). This is tough one to write! I have been fighting it since the beginning and going back and forth. It's slowly evolved into what will be a good book. However, it's taking far too much time and I want to get book 21 out.

It's a bit like the AI tools I've been playing with to try to put together scenes for a movie-like trailer or series intro (haven't decided what style yet). I created some good clips so far, but I really need to focus on character references to create more. So, I'm working on that now and it's eating up my time. Just when I think I have a picture I like, I tweak one detail and the AI changes something else. 😫 It's coming along, but sometimes it eats up a whole day. (I have great models of L'Ni and Nik!) When that's done, I can also do a whole new character collection. AI has come a long ways since I first played with Midjourney.

So, I'm going to jump into edits for Book 21 now and get that out sooner than later. It's easier to edit than to write while I'm getting these character images as I want them. I need to take editing in pieces to keep my mind fresh while writing requires a more steady focus, so this is the best combination.

Besides that, when I publish book 21, I can go back to finish 23 and jump right into 24. That should make the transition easier... should (usually, but these final three books are a bigger challenge than anything else).

Thanks for reading.

Saying good-bye... again

This will likely be our last Caturday as a household of four cats. My old Siamese has been declining for the last year. I didn't expect him to hit 15 years, but that passed a bit over three months ago. While we've been doing all we can to help him, the light has been dimming from his eyes as kitty dementia has been setting in, and he has been fussier and fussier about the limited food he can tolerate with his IBD. Nevertheless, he has held together, and, despite his sleeping all day every day for the last week, he's been taking his usual place on my bed when it's my night Rosary time; he's been my prayer buddy for all the years since I started the Rosary, and he still remembers and enjoys that part of our routine, the only routine he's been keeping.

Dargo is at the end of his life (we've been through this once before with our first cat, who lived to be 16). At this point, all we can do is make him comfortable and hope that he passes at home. It's not illness or his thyroid issue, teeth problems, or IBD this time. It's old age catching up to him. I believe Bilbo was sent to adopt us to ease this transition; the two are very different yet so much alike in how they love laps and snuggles under the covers that it's uncanny. (No wonder they became good friends in the nearly fourteen months since Bilbo became part of our household.)

I took this a few weeks ago of the two snuggling together.

This pic that I took about two weeks ago was one of the last best pics of our two big boys, synchronized sleeping on the bed while our sheets were in the wash.

We've done all we can for him. Although I expected this to come a while ago, it's still not easy. He's been a momma's boy all his life (since we got him at about 8 weeks old). Bilbo is a daddy's boy but snuggles with me when he can't have his preferred human. He's a bigger boy, though, and not Dargo.

I don't know how many days we have left with Dargo, but we'll make him as comfortable as we can.

God bless!

The next project... leaving a legacy

I like staying busy, although life doesn't always let me do what I want.

Book 23 gets better and better. I keep seeing ways to improve it and rewriting bits and pieces already laid down in the first draft. I have around 25K words on it so far, but the foundation has to be fixed for the whole structure to be stable. I was working with an incomplete idea but those have been coming over the last week and making it stronger and stronger so that the rest, which I do have planned, will be even more grand when it's finished.

Aside from that, there's another project I've wanted to complete for many, many years... a reference book about horses for the inexperienced writer/creator or simply novice equestrians. I joined Substack to follow the Based Book Sale and recently posted an intro. Soon after, I thought about making the most of the platform, but it really isn't my cuppa. However, my next post idea was this. The problem is that my thoughts overflowed on describing my history with horses and I've only just begun.

So, when I have spare time or the characters aren't coming together for me to write on Book 23, I'll work on this as a side project. I'll see what comes of it. I may even see about querying a nonfiction publisher, but that's not a priority. I have the outline in place already and just need to fill in the details... a bullet point summary of everything equine for the novice or uninitiated. This will be a way of leaving a legacy of much of the basic knowledge I've accumulated over more than forty years with horses.

And you can thank Buddy for inspiring this. I went to see him Saturday and he was his usual charming self. Here he is doing his weird habit of sucking his tongue:

And a pic of him nibbling me to find the pocket with the treats:

God bless!

Another Book 23 update

Book 23 is very different from all the other books in the course of writing it, but it wasn't unexpected.

I anguish over every lag in a story... and then I pray and... the inspiration comes. It's similar to what happened with writing Book 19.

Often, the books that are hardest to write end up being among my best. My agonizing over turning them into stories that keep the readers' attention from beginning to end pushes me to find the right elements to do that. There's a certain sense of immediacy and question of how each story could be resolved that I work to create, along with answering questions important to the conclusion of the series.

If I'm getting bored, the readers will definitely be bored. That's how I know a certain tension is missing. The problem is figuring out how to increase it.

The ideas on this book have only trickled in a little at a time after a lot of trial and error. It's been one of my most difficult so far, which means I have been scrutinizing every detail to determine what's missing and what works or doesn't work for the story. It's been coming together in a way that's inconvenient, but each piece adds a new satisfaction in its increasing tension for the plot.

Tonight, that piece created an imminent threat of a suspected sleeper agent on a Starfire world, which gave me a whole bunch of ways to increase the dangers to the characters. 😈 The plan is now set up pretty well. This is going to be a lot of fun to write from this point on!

Thanks for reading!

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update 12/21/25: I wrote 1600 word scene today for the end of the book and will write more this evening. That scene will need a little change by the time I write to that point, but it was a scene I couldn't wait to write, especially now that I have the rest of the story planned.

Book 1... revisited

I knew book 1 of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds was rough, but I never could get my mind into how to fix it. On a whim, I reread it this weekend, all in one day, and suddenly, I knew. The binge read made it clearer than a slow read. The answer came to me--it was thin and a bit clunky/rough in the narrative.

*sigh*

Almost seven years since I published this one and I finally see more clearly. It's not the story so much as the details. That first book was the foundation, and the excitement and rush of the first of a new series carried me away. I didn't know yet quite how the series would develop. I had my plan with the series arc and plot ideas for each episode, but the details and style had to develop, along with the characters.

Now, I'm cleaning it up in a way that I see more clearly after getting stuck on Book 23... again. It isn't really cleaning so much as completing what's there. Book 1, as I mentioned, feels to me clunky and rough, but this will smooth out those rough edges and help it flow more naturally. It'll also bring it more into the style of the rest of the series.

It shouldn't take long, but it will push the word count over the 40K novel minimum length. I'll be able to say that all the books are short novels. 😁 It's getting close already, and I'm not quit halfway through the second pass (if you count that binge read as the first pass) with lots of clarifying details added and removing odd thoughts that break the flow.

Edits on the nineteen other books published in the series has helped me see things more clearly. In fact, reading book nineteen has shown me just how much better the writing and editing became throughout the series. I thought the first was good--and it wasn't terrible, imo (I'm biased, though)--but it will be much better when I finish this little side project.

Now, the challenge is not to add something that's not there until later in the series.

Stay tuned!

Coming soon... very soon

I'm finalizing edits on Book 20 of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds. This has been a long time in the works, but I've had a strange summer that made writing difficult for Book 22 and then editing Book 20--the death of a family member and the stress this caused, along with planning and implementing the other project.

Now, I'm FINALLY happy with Book 20. The formatting is cleaned up and ready. I just need a quick review of a few sections. By this weekend, it will be available. A book announcement email will go out with links once those are all ready.

It's been a weird year for me, and readers will finally get some answers of how Zaer and Shen met!

DARKEST DEPTHS (Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds 20)

When a Starfire shard calls out to Nya in desperation, she immediately transports the Iludrin to a world where they discover game hunters threatening the security of the shard.

Nya and L'Ni head to the surface with Zaer and Shen on the Cartegos. There, they find one of the small hunter vessels unguarded. While the hunters are away, Shen has an idea to disable it. However, when one of the local creatures attacks, the ship—with Shen on it—crashes over a cliff into the sea and sinks beneath the surface.

That's not the only trouble to come for them. With no time to grieve the loss of another friend, Zaer and the others are forced to escape the world with the shard, but what arrives reveals that the creatures of that world are not the only ones being hunted.

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Thanks for reading!

And just for fun...

Bilbo hanging out in the catio

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!

More big edits than I expected

Well...

I'm not as far in edits on Book 19 as I expected. I found another scene that required some major rewrites.

I was about 4/5 done in this editing pass when I hit upon a Starfire shard flashback revealed to Nya. It's an issue in which I give a description to transition faster through narrative to the important points. I realized some things were out of order and needed to provide a more logical explanation going into a full scene. That took a while to iron out, along with ideas to make the other scenes in that sequence better.

I remember thinking when I was writing the first draft that the story overall would need some big edits but didn't worry about it then because I knew after some time away it would become more clear to me. Boy, has it!

It's not like having to rewrite a whole story (like I did for Starfire Angels and Broken Wings 15-17 years ago between the two); but it is a lot of rewriting/rearranging. Every story varies. After I draft a book, I set it aside for what ends up being 6-8 months. By the time I get back to it, I have a fresh take on it. I still remember it, but I've been away enough to view it more objectively. I view it from an editor lense and rip it apart.

I add details and better transitions. (You wouldn't want to read the first draft!) I also add those in the subsequent editing rounds and end up adding quite a bit, along with rearranging sentences (ideas), taking out unnecessary narration, etc. Where the drafting stage was the setting down of most of the plot and major ideas, the editing stage fixes the issues and fills in the gaps. The last editing round is always taking out excessive words, fixing awkward phrases, correcting typos, and fixing formatting.

I'm almost done with these huge fixes in the story and am anxious to start the next round and see what I find in that to fix that might have been introduced with these big changes or that I've missed because I was editing while being tired or foggy brained. I'll have a better idea of how these changes will feel in the flow of the story in the next pass.

It's coming along, being refined and honed.

And I'm still making my way through the earlier books. I'm finishing up book 7 and have found a few fixes to make in that (usually 1-2 chapters while on the treadmill). I'll always find fixes in my books. Art is never finished, only abandoned. I write first for myself, so I do enjoy going back and rereading the books. What I don't enjoy is knowing I'll always want to fix things. I love this whole series and will be enjoying them long after it's finished, but I hope at some point that I'm happy with them as they are.

Thanks for reading.

ps - Bilbo takes any lap he can get, including my lap when I sit down, and Dargo wants his spot next to me, even overcoming his hesitations about Bilbo to be close. The other day, I had Bilbo half on me and Dargo laid next to us. To get up, I had to slide Bilbo off my lap, which meant he and Dargo were next to each other. I managed to get some pics of that moment. It was an amazing step in their relationship. No hissing or striking at each other. First one then the other got up... and went out to the kitchen thinking they would get food. Small steps.

Uh, oh... story ideas

I've been doing well to focus exclusively on Forgotten Worlds this long. Usually I'm working on one book and other ideas inundate me. That hasn't happened in a long time. I had an exclusive focus on Forgotten Worlds for six years (since I started planning and writing book 1). I had been able to squelch any spark of other ideas before they ignited into a conflagration.

Today, something came to me that is so amazing--new ideas always are--that I've had to synopsize the full story. It is incredible! Urban fantasy that starts out like it will be horror but then transforms into something much different than expected. It's still a bit dark in places, but it has a bright ending. What makes it different is the religious element of it.

This is typical for the creative mind. We'll see how I feel in a couple of years after I finish Forgotten Worlds. If I put this aside and it still has a grip on me after time away from the idea, I'll know that it's meant to be written. If I can't get it out of my head, I'll know that I need to write it immediately. I could write two books at once. That isn't easy, but with two distinctly different stories, it can be done (Forgotten Worlds and this).

I must confess that I was expecting to be done writing after Forgotten Worlds, but with this idea, I think I've found a new direction for my writing after I'm done with this series. The ideas never truly quit coming.

Once a writer, always a writer.

It's been a wet week

If you're only reading this post because of innuendo, you have a dirty mind. Now that I have your attention...

This morning just killed all my momentum. I'm more numb than mad at this point. I was leaving for work and saw the upright freezer door open in the garage.

Imagine the horror--all the hard work of two years of patient garden growing and processing the fruits of that garden (and veggies), only to find it all thawed.

I had just been in that freezer the night before, but so had someone else, after me. One of the kids took ice cream out and put it back (both garden goodies and ice cream have been kept in the same freezer... but no longer). Unfortunately, that kid wasn't careful. I made this mistake once but caught it after a few hours, so there wasn't anything to worry about. I learned to push the door shut after it was shut--it became a habit for me. My kids apparently didn't learn from that.

All we could salvage was whatever I can eat over the next week of the 18 cups of sweet peas I had stored up from this summer, not counting what I ate already (all that work picking and shelling to store up and enjoy until next summer's growing season, gone in a week instead of a year 😭); and whatever of the cut bell peppers that hubby could fit in his dehydrator. Once food thaws, it's not supposed to be refrozen because of the increased risk of bacterial growth.

All the ice cream I had bought on sale just a couple of weeks ago... gone. 

The freezer was a sopping mess.

I guess our freezer wanted to imitate the heavy rains we had the last couple of days that made our yard a sopping mess. (We needed the rain, but it came hard and fast, creating rivers through the valleys, refilling ponds, and flooding roads and some homes and businesses in town.)

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On writing...

On a good note, I had been making good progress on the writing. Book 20 is over 13K words (1/4-1/3 expected first draft final word count), plus when I haven't been writing, I've been working on the remainder of the series planning. Book 21 has consumed me. I think I'll stick to my original working title of ARMOR for that. It seems to fit the story outline that has filled out with ideas over this past week. I know the book 25 title too -- FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS -- but books 22, 23, and 24 are basic ideas yet and their titles uncertain. Those will require some intensive planning since they will be the homestretch to the series climax I have planned in book 25.

Thanks for reading!

exciting stuff planned... a few updates

I'm still working on edits for Book 16. I hope to be in the last big round of edits. It's pretty good overall, but needs just a bit more refinement.

The delay is due to a variety of issues. One of them is my age. I'm in that stage of crushing fatigue during the day and sleep disruptions at night. Mornings are good to a point, but without black tea, I'm doomed by noon. Not even a Dr. Pepper can save me, and coffee is way too strong for my tolerance (and disgusting to my tastes). This is part of the sleep disruption-daytime nap cycle I'm in. And forget supplements. Sure, they help my focus and attention, but they contribute to the sleep disruption. Once in a while nothing bothers me, but I can't count on that.

Add that to just having closed out the busiest time of year at work. I'm finally recovering a few days later. Surprisingly, my head is clear for editing. It's just the fatigue/sleep issue. It could be my thyroid, but it's most likely my stage in life, from the research I've done.

I'll find a way to make it work until hormones straighten out.

Another distraction would be book trailers. I want to create more of those, but they take away from writing/editing, so I'll have to balance that. Fortunately, up to this point, my MacBook Pro wasn't powerful enough to do too much of that. After Effects is a resource hog.

But that will be changing. I'm upgrading to a Mac Studio! 😍 

I did some research on what the best configuration would be for what I plan to do and did some budgeting. I have the keyboard and mouse purchased (didn't need that with a laptop). I ordered the monitor (the Samsung ViewFinity UHD monitor on sale from Best Buy currently for $229 was a fraction of the cost of an Apple monitor ($1599)) and ordered Mac Studio with the M2 Max chip (custom configured direct from Apple). I also found a case on Amazon to store the computer, mouse, and keyboard when I'm not using them. I don't have a desk, so I will need to put that away every day; the case will help. Fortunately, I have my iPad Mini for portability.

I'm looking forward one day to trying out the Unreal Engine and maybe creating some animated stories, but that would take an enormous amount of time from writing. I'll find the balance somehow. It sure would be fun to get into scripting my books into animated stories, though! Maybe when I'm finished with the Forgotten Worlds series, I'll dig into animated stories more fully, but that would be at least a couple of years in the future.

The main reason for now to upgrade is book trailers. The MacBook is a 15" with 2.3 MHz Intel Core i9 and only 16 GB RAM and 500 GB hard drive space. I wasn't planning on creating book trailers when I bought it. And when I bought it, my previous MacBook Pro stopped charging on me and I had to make an emergency purchase from what was available locally. (I was working from home at the start of Covid, so it was a true emergency.) After creating a couple of trailers using Ae templates (see below), I found I really like the visual medium. However, I'm running out of hard drive space, and the RAM and processor can't handle After Effects. Premiere Pro isn't a problem, but Ae has the best features, so it's time to upgrade (and Apple financing at 0% for 12 months is too convenient).

It's an investment that will give me the power to create in new ways.

(The 1 minute trailer below took 2 hours to render on my MacBook Pro, and it was running hot!)

Updates on writing progress

I hate getting older. Keeping track of a million things is about 999,999 more than I can handle at one time. I live off lists. I always did, but now it's going completely haywire! The day job has me feeling like a chicken with its head cut off most of the time, and I've had so many things going on outside of the day job that I can hardly keep up, even with a calendar. 🤪

Nevertheless, I do manage to get some writing time in. I'm working on Book 16 of Forgotten Worlds. So far, I have 6,000 words of that and a synopsis that leaves room for surprises. Since these are short novels of 40K-50K words, that's good progress.

Relationships have changed over the past few books and one character's arc is going to head down a dark path while others are resolving issues. You won't see some of it come to fruition for some time. I have to be careful how I plot those changes.

By now, you've had a chance to see something that you may have suspected, if you've read SOUL SHADOW. That book is a bit dark, because it reveals the creature that Nya has been conscripted by the Starfire entities to fight. She gets a taste of battle with the creature directly.

I have to reveal a little secret in developing that story, or at least in editing. I had been having questions about how to handle certain religious issues of this story; and shortly before I started the editing process, I found Father Chad Ripperger on YouTube (see this previous post). His lectures hooked me and explained a lot about spiritual warfare that I had some knowledge about but not to the degree that he clarified. The scariest part is that he confirmed some things I suspected, which were incorporated into SOUL SHADOW already.

Although the creature that the Issan worship isn't a true demon, it is a monster that acts like one. I focused on L'Ni, however, using the creature as a crutch and showing how he rejected it and breaks its influence on his life. This will give you the readers, like Nya and the other characters, a bigger revelation of what's at stake.

Once I finished editing and published Book 13--what a number for a book of such a dark plot (I didn't realize it until afterwards. Honest!)--I read through Book 14. That's a mess. I don't look forward to editing that one. Adding action to Nik's and Ann's wedding was a challenge--the wedding alone would have been boring--but I'm not so sure certain aspects flow well. Certain changes feel a bit abrupt. I may have to rearrange some things. 😖

I won't even touch Book 15 for a while, since I had just finished that. So, for now, I'll keep working on Book 16, but I really can't wait until Book 17. I will finally get to reveal something BIG that I've been planning for a long time and hinting. In the meantime, I'm trying to stay focused on 16, returning to Seska and the results of her helping her people escape. Ann's very public marriage to Nik has created some panic in Paxon leadership, so there's a lot to unpack for book 16. This series is getting a bit more complex.

Exciting! Isn't it? 😁

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music suggestions for Forgotten Worlds

I've never applied it as a reader of any particular book, but as an author, music definitely has an influence on me. There's something about music that inspires, whether it's a deep, thumping bass; a lively jig; a dramatic score; something discordant and creepy; or soft and gentle. Music can affect ones emotions and inspire ideas. Its affects are well documented in studies.

As a writer, I often hear a song that connects with a particular scene or character. It has a power all its own on my creativity, igniting a focus that I can't escape.

All of my books have at some point had songs or scores that hit the right note (pun intended) with a scene or character.

In my latest series, Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds, I've found some scores along the way that kept me going, but when it came to Book 10: DRAGON AND FURY, there have been two now that really struck me. Initially, Shadowlands by Revolt Music Productions struck me as the combat games entrance of each titular fighter, the Black Dragon and the Fury.

I can't help but to picture their entrance, the pause before the fight starts, and then the beginning of their fight. It first struck me at some point while writing the book. I could see it for other possibilities too.

And then, after releasing the book, I was struck by Undefeated by Skillet.

This one too, I could see for the intense action between the combatants, but I could see this in general for many parts of the series.

And long before these, when I heard Everlasting Legacy by Really Slow Motion, I saw a trailer for the series.

Similarly, there's In Ascendance, also from Revolt Production Music. (I find the whole album to have a very action-intense/science fiction feel, but this one in particular has hooked me with the trailer feel.)

Others on my playlist that inspire me in this series include music not only from the composers I mentioned but also Two Steps from Hell, Ivan Torrent, Audiomachine, and Future World Music. There are others, but I just thought I'd share something of what I like when I'm writing this series. Two Steps from Hell is soft compared to some of the others I listed, but you hear their music in many trailers and are hearing more of these others. I've listened to these so often that I'll watch a movie trailer or hear a commercial and instantly recognize the music.

There are far more songs and compositions I could go through, but this will give you an idea of what presently inspires me in my science fiction and some of the music that really grabs me with imagining particular points in the Forgotten Worlds series, up to this point in it. I'm sure there will be others as I continue to write.

Off topic, I just have two other notes... I can say that the first draft of Book 13 is two-thirds done. It will be interesting, but I hope all the books are. I also saw a first glimpse of my new website and... WOW! I can't wait until it's ready for the big reveal.

the bane of a long series

I just realized the addiction that all sff writers must have, which I am calling MSUAIG (Making Stuff Up As I Go, although the "S" could be a certain 4-letter word). I have spent this morning checking through the previous 9 books of the Forgotten Worlds series and realizing how much I didn't add to my series wiki (aka series bible) that I should have in there for when I have questions. I have also realized that I need to break it into some new categories because it has grown to be too much for simple alphabetizing. I knew this would happen but not to this degree.

Fictional worlds with your own made up stuff can get tangled with details of other fictional worlds we've enjoyed, and keeping that straight is like untangling delicate necklaces that were thrown into a box and shook up. (If you've ever experienced that, you know what a frustration it is to untangle.) It's also why I can't read much of other books or watch much television other than news/nonfiction when I'm in a project like this. I can only do that when I'm taking a break or it gets jumbled.

At some point, the MSUAIG catches up and I have too much stuff to manage easily. I need to make the time to organize it better now that it's grown so enormous. I only have half this series written and it's already a monster to manage. I hope that I can keep everything consistent, which was why I was checking through the past books. There are some small formatting inconsistencies, but nothing major, at least nothing major that jumped out at me. That's also why I make notes about certain details that don't fit neatly into any category.

Nevertheless, I am doing my best to stay on top of those details. I am a stickler for it, but I am nowhere near perfect. I would need a photographic memory to keep track of everything perfectly all the time. Since I don't have a perfect memory, I'll just have to keep making time to skim back over the series before I finish new books. This is partly why each new book is taking longer to finish...because I worry about details.

I am constantly worrying about names of people and places and numbers--did I already mention Nik's siblings besides Tatiana (Tia)? Did I mention previously how long Ann was captain or how long Simms was her first officer? I also worry about uniforms and descriptions and sayings--What expression would a Paxon use for frustration? (that I can remember pretty easily--Cursed Issan!)... and that's just a drop in the bucket of details I worry about.

You get the idea. Details like these are difficult to keep on track, but there are many minor details that worry me, perhaps even more so because they more easily slip by.

I am working hard on the final edits of Book 10 in the hopes of publishing later this month. This is but a small part of the editing process, and usually after I've managed the major factors of the story. However, it is very important to me to the point that, if you find any inconsistencies, please contact me. There may be a logical reason for something seeming to be inconsistent, but it could also be that no one else caught the mistake.

Coming soon!

 

the trials and victories of series writing

So, I've been struggling with writing Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds for the last month. I've been writing scenes and scrapping them. Something has been off, partly me (unfocused and foggy) and partly because of that unconscious mind trying to say something is wrong with the plan. The infamous infection of writer's block has been a scourge on me, a blight that I haven't been able to lift.

And then, when I thought I had the story moving forward, albeit at a snail's pace, I realized what I was actually writing was the end of #7 and the beginning of #8. It just occurred to me today while walking on the treadmill and watching an episode of Stargate: Atlantis. Something in that episode of Dr. Weir having to fight nanites who have been trying to make her believe she never went to Atlantis clicked for me.

Disposition of Dreams is very similar in a way, and that's the only hint anyone is getting of the plot at this point, except for the blurb on the front of the cover that is online.

If you look closely, it says "Nya's survival will depend on choosing the right reality." It was an interesting story to write and very appropriate for the series progress. You'll see why this summer.

The problem has been following that up. I am so anxious to skip right to #8, Racing the Orast Belt (or something like that for the title), that I think a part of my mind was trying to skip ahead and write that when I know I should be writing the transition between the two books. What I want to write and what I know I should be writing have been conflicting, like trying to drive a car with one foot on the gas and one on the brake.

Now, while rewatching Stargate: Atlantis, I finally became aware of the conflict that was causing this horrendous case of writer's block. With that knowledge, I think I can go forward on FW7, because it occurred to me what I needed was something else entirely than what I expected. Nya suffered greatly in 6, and 7 needs to reflect that and move her forward in healing. And I was thinking while walking that I wanted to do more with Vel's character development. That with the plot in the Atlantis episode made me realize what the series needed in a way that finally satisfied the unconscious writing mind.

I've moved what I had started for FW7 to be the opening for FW8, so I'm back to a blank page for 7; in other words, starting over (again), but I know now what I need to do. Also, I didn't know how I was going to start 8, and what I was creating under the guise of 7 works brilliantly; the general scenes will remain to get the characters to the races, figuratively and literally. However, it will require some rewriting with whatever I fill in between. I had also written a scene that I felt was more of a closing/transition scene (which are usually characters outside the main cast) and will use that at the end of 7. This will set me back, but it will move the series forward in a better way. I just needed to get that out of my head so I could clear it away for what I really needed to do.

Whew! Writing can be a mess sometimes. I took on this challenge of such a series because I had a vision to write something grand in scale and scope. I knew it would be a challenge, but I thought I had it under control. My muse loves to torment me sometimes.

A simple request

To all my loyal readers, thank you! I appreciate your continued support, and I promise to do my best to entertain you.

To all readers, I have a request in exchange for the short time of reading pleasure that (I hope) my stories brought you. I don't like to ask, but my books are needing some love. Many of my books are free, so I hope you consider this a small price in exchange.

Please leave reviews, especially on Amazon. You don't know how much that helps me, especially if you liked a particular book and think others would also.

1. It helps others readers discern if a book/series would be for them or not.
2. I need a minimum number of reviews and rating to qualify for some forms of advertising. Without that, I can't hope to attract more readers.
3. Reviews are figured in the algorithms to make a book appear in more searches on Amazon.

If you would like to see one of my stories gain new ground so that others are more likely discover the same enjoyment that I hope you've found in my worlds, this is how you can help.

I put in countless hours on each book, developing, creating, writing, rewriting (many times!), and editing, so that you can escape from real world troubles for a short while. I only ask a few minutes of your time outside of that escape to leave some comments and a star rating.

Thank you!