Welcome to my worlds!

I'm James Maxey, author of fantasy and science fiction. My novels include the science fantasy Bitterwood Saga (4 books) the Dragon Apocalypse Saga (4 books), numerous superhero novels including Nobody Gets the Girl and the Lawless series, the steampunk Oz sequel Bad Wizard, and my short story collections, There is No Wheel and Jagged Gate. This website is focused exclusively on writing. At my second blog, Jawbone of an Ass, I ramble through any random topic that springs to mind, occasionally touching on religion and politics and other subjects polite people are sensible enough not to discuss in public. If you'd like to get monthly updates on new releases, as well as preview chapters and free short stories, join my newsletter!




Saturday, March 25, 2017

Covenant V2 progress

This week, I started the second draft of Covenant, the third book in my superhero trilogy. I've rewritten five chapters so far. When I wrote the first draft, I felt like the early chapters were pretty terrible, but they've held up surprisingly well now that I'm rewriting them. When I wrote the first draft, I wasn't clear about who the main villain of the story would be. I knew what the main villain needed to do in order to have a plot, but their identity and motive hadn't quite clicked. I think the stress of uncertainty on such an important element of the story made me feel like everything I was writing was going to get tossed out. Fortunately, the opening chapters made it onto the page much better than I remembered.

I have a fairly aggressive timeline for getting this rewritten. ConCarolinas is the first weekend in June and I'd really like to have this rewritten and published by then. That's only about 10 weeks away, which is a pretty insane goal to strive for. I definitely don't want to let a desire for speed lead me into shortchanging quality. On the other hand, this is the third book in a series and the main character, Sarah, has been a character in my head for close to seventeen years, ever since I wrote the first draft of Nobody Gets the Girl. Writing her scenes is pretty easy. I'll just keep working and hope for the best.