How do you find time to write?

Some of the most common questions I hear when I’m doing events are about time management. I’m frequently asked how many hours a day I write. Another common question is how long it takes me to write a book. Perhaps the most common obstacle new writers worry about is that they just can’t find time to write.

I get it. You probably have a job that you work forty hours a week. Assuming you care about your health, you’re likely sleeping fifty-six hours a week and exercising at least three or four. If you care about your mental health, you have relationships. Your family deserves your time and attention, and life without friends would be unbearable. All these people demand a slice of your time, and deserve it far more than a computer screen opened to a blank page. Finally, it’s important to relax and to be entertained. An evening set aside to read a book, a night spent going out to dinner, a movie marathon on the weekends, or taking a few minutes here and there to play a game on your phone are good ways to relieve stress. You can’t be “on” all the time.

Of course, by the time you’ve done your work, given time to friends and family, relaxed and entertained yourself, you find that, hmm, another week has gone by and you haven’t written a single page.

When I was in my twenties, I was working on a novel and progress was slow. I used to daydream about how much I could write if writing was my whole job. I fantasized that I’d publish a single book, it would make me financially secure enough to quit my day job, and after that it would be smooth sailing as I cranked out book after book. In other words, I was caught in a fantasy that seduces a lot of beginning authors: One day, when I’m a writer, I’ll have time to write.

And that’s bullshit. Take my word on this: Right now, you have the same amount of time available to write a book as everyone else. All those demands on your time are demands every other writer faces. What’s more, fantasizing that at some future date you’ll have more time to write is a rather feeble hope. I felt so busy and rushed in my twenties, but when I got into my thirties I wondered where all my free time had gone, and felt like all my new responsibilities were overwhelming. In my forties, I could look back and see just how few responsibilities I really had when I was thirty. As I’m writing this I’m in my fifties, and I’ve got demands on my time I didn’t even imagine a decade ago. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that you’ll never have more time available to you than you have at this moment. This is self-evidently true. Your life is an hourglass. The sand grains are pouring through, and there’s no way of turning the glass back over. Demands on your time will increase each year, especially if you’re a smart, capable, and responsible person. The more you’ve done, the more you get asked to do. You will never, ever, reaching that mythical state of finding time to write.

The solution: Make time to write. It’s that simple. There are things you need to give up so you can keep your butt in your chair and type. There are other things you need to stop doing so you can daydream and let your imagination run wild.

I obviously can’t address your life specifics, but a few of the things I gave up in order to write were gaming and television. Like a lot of young men, I used to have a pretty extensive collection of video games. And, because I’m a geek, I loved games that didn’t require a screen, stuff like D&D, Warhammer, Magic the Gathering, and just plain old spades and rummy and hearts. I ran weekly game nights and spent a lot of time designing campaigns and painting miniature armies. All the time, I kept thinking of myself as a writer, even though I really was piddling along and writing maybe a chapter a month. It took me two or three years to write a book, but speed isn’t everything, is it? I mean, taking time to get stuff right is a good thing.

But I wasn’t taking time to get stuff right. I was taking time to second guess myself. When I would go a week or more between sitting down to write, I’d lose momentum. Passion for my project would diminish. Worse, I’d change my mind about what I’d already written because I was giving the ideas time to grow and mutate. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it meant I kept restarting the same projects again and again to incorporate new ideas for characters, settings, and plot points.

Good writing requires momentum. A first draft should be a project of weeks, not years, if it’s to feel coherent and whole. My first book took me three years to finish and it was a mess. My second I worked on for two years, and my third took about the same time. None were ready for publication, and with my glacial pace of writing, I was constantly wondering whether I should put them aside and start with a new, better idea, or keep slogging away at a manuscript I no longer cared about. Then, I stumbled into something that changed my writing forever: A deadline. A completely arbitrary one. It was November of 2000. I was one of those calendar snobs who insisted that the new millennium didn’t actually being until January 1, 2001. And as part of a conversation with some other novice writers, we decided to challenge ourselves with writing the first new novel of the millennium. We’d start books on November 15, and type “the end” at midnight on December 31. I thought it was a pretty crazy goal. At that point I seldom finished short stories in a month and a half, let alone a whole book. But, I agreed to the challenge and just started writing. I knew I needed 1500 words a day to finish a novel by the deadline, which meant I needed about two hours each night. Two hours each night is about what I spent watching television. So, no television until I finished my words for the night. When weekends came around I normally met up with friends and gamed. Since I was working on my book, I went to hang out with my friends but took my laptop. I sat in the corner and wrote while they played video games, and from time to time we’d all take breaks and talk. I gave up gaming without giving up my friends.

I was worried about whether I’d be able to keep up the pace for a month and a half, but made an interesting discovery. Since I was writing every day, when I’d sit down to write the previous session’s work was still fresh in my mind. I developed a habit of stopping my chapters a line or two before they reached the end. That way, when I sat down the next day, I already knew the first hundred words or so I’d be typing, and once you’ve typed  your first hundred, your second hundred flows more easily, and after a half hour or so you’re so absorbed you’ll just keep writing without effort. Momentum mattered!

I know writers who have built a career out of writing 1000 words of first draft a day, every day. I’m not one of those writers. I still spend a lot of weeks and months between projects when I’m not writing first drafts. I also tend to binge on first drafts, going a few days producing nothing then sitting down for an eight hour word-a-thon where I crank out several chapters in a row.

Where do I find eight hours in a row? For years, I made the time by only working four days a week at my day job. Where I worked, there were certain shifts that were hard to keep filled. I told my boss I’d work these hard to fill spots on the schedule permanently, but in exchange I’d only be working four days. He took the deal. So, I’d work Sunday and Monday, have Tuesday and Wednesday off, then work Thursday and Friday. This cut my income, but on my mid-week days I was home when all my friends and family were working, so I could really focus on producing work. My goal with this schedule was to get out 10,000 words a week, and for the most part I met that goal. 10,000 words a week seems to be my most comfortable pace. I write a lot of epic fantasy novels about 120,000 words long. So, it takes me about three months to produce a first draft, two months to polish a second draft, and another month to finish a third draft. All further drafts are normally stuff I squeeze in here and there because I’ve already moved on to another project.

These days, I no longer have a day job. I’ve got over fifteen books in print and it’s enough of a back catalogue to keep revenue trickling in while I’m working on new stuff. I still find it hard to write much more than ten hours each week. Part of it is due to my transition to self-publishing. As I’ll discuss in later posts, the publishing aspect of being an indy author can easily devour every moment you choose to put into it. This isn’t wasted time, and in fact it’s essential if you want to have a career, but every moment you spend on the business side is a moment that gets stolen from the creative side. Another reason I only write ten hours a week is that, every now and then, I’ve attempted more and found it unsustainable.

I once walked into my day job and was told I didn’t need to show up for work the follow week. They’d discovered a code violation in the building and had to shut down to rewire the whole workplace. I went home wondering if I could write a book in a week. It turns out, yes. That book was Burn Baby Burn, and I consider it one of my best novels. It required very little rewriting because it flowed out so coherently and there was very little I needed to revise. I would get up each morning at 7 and write until 7 in the evening. A week later, I had a book. I also had back aches, sore hands, and memory problems. Writing so much so quickly almost literally emptied out my brain. I felt like I was in a mental fog for weeks afterward. Then, I did it to myself again! I took a new job, and had a week off between my old job and my new one. This time, I wanted to try a new strategy. I spent four alternating days writing, with a daily goal of 15,000 words. And it worked! A complete manuscript in four working days. And … it wasn’t as good as Burn Baby Burn. It wasn’t terrible, it just needed a lot of rewriting. Because of the pace I was writing, I didn’t have time to second guess my choices at certain moments where the plot could go one way or another. That had worked out well with Burn Baby Burn, but with the new novel, I reached the end and realized that the book I finished wasn’t the book I’d begun. It was actually a better book than my initial vision, but the second draft required me tossing out easily half of the original manuscript and starting fresh. And, again, I finished that writing marathon with the same physical symptoms. My back hurt, my legs were numb, and my hands took a month to feel normal again. A mental fog once more descended over me and made it hard to concentrate for a long time. I’ve heard other writers complain about “writer’s brain,” where the ability to concentrate on things in the real world is difficult after you’ve spent a lot of time deep in your imagination. You wind up going through the paces of your ordinary life like a zombie, not quite all there. It doesn’t affect everyone, but for me it’s a serious obstacle.

I’m not saying I’ll never attempt another week long writing marathon, but I’m also comfortable just plodding along with my 10,000 words a week.

So, to answer the questions succinctly:

How many hours a week do I write? Between zero and sixty, but my goal is ten. There is no one correct answer for how many hours a week you need to write if you want to be a writer. Write as much as you can, always try to write a little more, and never be content. The haunting, nagging fear that you aren’t doing enough is great motivation.

How long does it take to write the first draft of a book? Between several years and a few days. Don’t get discouraged if you’ve been working on a project for what feels like forever. Once it’s in the hands of the reader, they’ll read the book in a matter of hours. The length of time you took to create the book will be invisible to them. Working on a book for years might mean you’ve taken the time to craft a timeless masterwork, or it might mean you’re just flailing around on something that never feels finished because of underlying flaws. Banging out a book in under a month might mean you’re a hack throwing valueless words on a page in desperate attempt to grab a few dollars, or it might mean you’ve captured lightning in a bottle and are writing the most important story you’ll ever tell.

How do I find the time to write? By cutting back on entertainment, like gaming and television. I often have to choose between consuming art and creating it. Since a person can’t live without art, focus on consuming the art you’re trying to perfect, and read widely. When the universe throws time at you, like my unexpected week off, pounce.

Finally, one thing I haven’t talked about yet is writing time that doesn’t involve putting your butt in the chair and typing. Carve out time in your life to daydream. On your drive back and forth to work, turn off your car radio and let your mind wander. I had the benefit of being really bored at my day job a lot of the time, and was able to imagine whole scenes that went into my books while I was being paid for pretending to focus on something else. Now that I work from home, I spend a fair amount of time exercising. I go out kayaking for hours, and do 20+ mile bike rides a few times a week. Both require only a moderate amount of attention once I’m in motion, giving me time to think about my books. Or, if I’ve been writing a lot and am lost in a writer’s fog, being out in nature helps pull be back to reality. Even just going out for a walk alone is good for the body and the mind. Time you set aside to exercise doesn’t have to subtract from time you spend writing novels. If anything, it can be the time you’re devoting to mining your imagination, hunting for the precious words that will finally make it to the page.

Do you have what it takes to be a writer?

I meet a lot of people who want to be writers.

I also meet a lot of people who’ve written a few things and would like to see them published.

And, I meet writers who’ve actually published a few things, but feel lost on how to get anyone to read their work or, more importantly, how to make money from their books.

For the next few articles I’ll be blogging about these things, moving from the general to the specific.

First, the big, usually unspoken question that haunts many, many authors: Am I a real writer?

I’ve never met a writer at any stage of their career that wasn’t haunted by self-doubt. If you’ve never written a novel, you wonder how you can possibly call yourself a writer when you haven’t produced a finished manuscript. You can’t finish the novel unless you write it, but how can you write it if you aren’t a real writer?

Or, you’ve written your novel. Maybe even a few novels. No one outside your circle of friends has read them. You polish and polish, but never feel like the book you’ve written is good enough to get sent out to a publisher. A real writer would already have their manuscript in the mail, right? (And, yes, I know that “in the mail” is something of an archaic phrase. When I started in this business you still sent paper manuscripts via postage.)

So, maybe you’ve actually hit the “send” button and submitted your manuscript to publishers, only to get silence and form letters in return. Sure, you’ve strung together 80,000 words in a more or less coherent fashion. But does that really make you a writer? If you’re not good enough to interest an editor maybe you’re not good enough, period. You’ve seen horrible, unoriginal, poorly written books make it into bookstores. What are you lacking? Why are these hacks selling books and getting reviews on Amazon while you’re watching the pages of your calendar fly away, movie style, as each unpublished year brings you and your work closer to oblivion.

Then, success! You’ve published a book! And nobody reads it. You have three friends who review it on Amazon, your sales ranking is a seven digit number, and now, finally, you have the evidence to prove what you’ve always secretly suspected: You’re no good at this. If you were any good at all, word of mouth and positive reviews would have driven you to at least moderate success. The silence that greets your book is the final nail in the coffin of your dream of being a writer. You suck at this. Time to give up.

But, wait! You’ve actually had a few people buy your book. You’ve got reviews from total strangers on Amazon. Some were glowing, some were harsh. You’re a real writer! But, wow, you’re not selling nearly enough books to be a real, real writer. You can’t break the top 10,000 on Amazon. Your name has never been on a New York Times bestseller list. For that matter, you’ve never been reviewed in any publication you actually read. No daytime TV shows have invited you on. NPR hasn’t booked you for Fresh Air. Oprah’s people aren't speaking to your people, if you have people. When you tell people you’re a writer you confront again and again the reality that they’ve never heard of you or your book.

Then: Success! You actually do creep onto a bestseller list. You’ve been interviewed by newspapers! You’ve talked about your book on the radio! Your book is popular! For maybe two months. Then it’s forgotten, swept aside by the deluge of new books demanding space and attention. To keep feeling like a writer, you need a new book, but what if your last book was your best book? What if lightning is never going to strike again? Good thing you didn’t quit your day job. Sure, you’re a writer, but you just don’t have what it takes to make a career out of it. Maybe you think your work is good, but you don’t have the type of personality that you need to promote yourself aggressively. You don’t have time to keep up with all the social media platforms. And you wrote your first book because you believed in it. Now you think you can maybe make a little money writing a sequel, but is it right to do it just for the money? Doesn’t that make you a hack instead of a real writer?

I promise you that the most successful writer you’ve ever heard of was haunted by these same self-doubts. Success only raises the bar. I’ve met plenty of authors who had one giant bestseller twenty years ago. They’ve put out a dozen other books since then, but it’s still that one book that everyone talks about.  All their hard work and experience have never duplicated that first beloved hit, even though, by their own judgment, some of their later books were better written. Maybe it wasn’t talent or hard work or superior quality that made that early book break out. Maybe it was just luck, the right book at the right time, and the same level of success might never come again.

Self-doubt is an author’s most valuable asset. If you ever vanquished it, you would have no need to ever learn anything new. You would have no reason to work harder to improve your writing, and no reason to work on any of the other skills you need to be a professional writer, the marketing, the accounting, the networking, and the never-ending struggle to keep abreast of a publishing world in constant turmoil.

The key is that this self-doubt needs to be matched with an almost equal measure of self-confidence, even arrogance. You have to believe that your words and your stories are important. You have to be able to read your own books and think, wow, I love this author! I can’t wait to read more by them! You have to be eager to encounter the potential reader who’s never heard of you and who couldn’t care less about your book and explain why your book is worth their time and energy.

Now some hard truth. The odds of making a really good living as a fiction writer are kind of low. All art is difficult to make a living at, in some ways because we undervalue art, but also because it’s not truly a rare commodity. The month you’re ready to release your book to the world, 10,000 other writers are going to take their shot as well. It’s hard to rise above the noise of so many voices crying for attention at once. On the plus side, the sheer number of books in this world can be taken as a reassurance. People write books all the time. You can too. This ain’t rocket surgery. It’s daydreaming, typing, and a tiny measure of organizational skills. I promise you can write all the books you’d like.

But if you are doing it to make money, sorry. Your odds of making a living that can provide you not just food, clothing, and shelter, but also healthcare and retirement funds are fairly low. But not everyone who can play guitar is going to wind up a Nashville superstar. They can still play songs they enjoy playing. And the fact that there are a million other people with guitars who can play just as well or better is no reason to put the guitar in the closet. The same is true with writing. I’ve written some books that have sold well. I’ve written others that might has well have been printed in invisible ink given how few people read them. In the end, though, the true measure of a novelist is this: Are you writing books you enjoy reading? If you are, you’re a writer. You are your most important audience.

And if you still hold out hope of making some money, I’ll let you in on the secret. That can be done as well, but it’s not guaranteed and it’s not easy. Still, the good news about those 10,000 other writers who released their first book the same day you did is that 9,900 aren’t going to write a second book. An even smaller number is going to write their tenth book. With patience, persistence, hard work and, yes, a bit of luck, you can beat the odds and make a reasonable income from writing.

In future posts, I’ll provide more specifics, and a path to slog toward success. Until then, go write something!

Victory: Lawless Book Three

Aliens have stolen the moon! Fortunately, Golden Victory leads the Lawful Legion into outer space to save the day. But, back on Earth, Screaming Jenny is trying to solve the mystery of her fractured memories, a quest that leads her to break a dangerous supervillain out of prison. The dark secrets she discovers will change the world forever, and may mean the end of the Lawful Legion. 

So, this all sounds pretty dire, and while the stakes are higher in this novel than in any of the previous Lawless books, I also think this might be the funniest of the three. There's so many different characters playing off one another that almost every page gets at least one funny line. Putting the dialogue in the scenes together was sort of like building a spoken word jigsaw puzzle. In the first draft, I'd reach the end of a chapter, feel pretty good about it, then realize, crap, Anyman was in the same room the whole time and didn't have a single word of dialogue. But, that's why you write second drafts, then third drafts, then fourth drafts, then start wondering why the hell you put yourself through this again and again and again. Then you read it one last time and find that somehow it's all come together and reads like a real book and everything, and the jigsaw puzzle dialogue has magically become an actual scene where the plot gets advanced and the various characters shine through. 

While the novel is named after Golden Victory, it's really a team effort, and the story is balanced among several characters. And, while I've mentioned the humor, it's a pretty dark novel in a lot of ways, as some of the characters have disturbing back stories. You don't take up the hobby of skulking in alleys and beating up muggers if you've come from a happy, healthy, well adjusted family. In other words, it's a James Maxey novel, a blend of the bizarre, the comic, the tragic, and the romantic. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Grab your copy here! 

Victory: Lawless Book Three Roll Call!

I've finished my second draft of Victory! Twenty costumed adventurers battling to decide the fate of the moon! Action! Humor! Romance! This book is going to have it all. To whet your appetite, here's a list of the major players:

Lawful Legion Roll Call

Golden Victory – Super strength, super speed, invulnerability, enhanced senses. Real identity Simon Palmer, small town newspaper editor. Fights evil to follow the golden rule.

Retaliator – Martial arts expert and master detective. Real identity Eric Gray, attorney. Fights crime to solve the mystery of his father’s death.

Anyman – Can use his teleporter to transform into any member of the Lawful Legion. Real identity, Harper Li, inventor. Became a superhero to impress a waitress.

Doppelganger/Echo – Can create explosive clones by cutting off an arm. Real identity Valentine Summer, lottery winner. Joined the Legion to avenge her own death.

Big Ape – Half man, half ape, super strength and toughness. Real identity Harry Moreau, unemployed. Became a superhero because of limited job opportunities for man/ape hybrids.

Screaming Jenny – Can set things on fire by cussing at them. Real identity Jenny Sanchez, hacker. Fights crime because she was brainwashed to do so.

Nimble – Rubberized body, nearly indestructible. Real identity Niko North. Fights to avenge the death of her parents.

Atomahawk – Living atomic reactor wearing high tech armor. Real identity John Niache. Fights out of patriotic duty.

Blue Bee II – Enhanced strength, endurance, senses. Can communicate with bees. Real identity Honey Dunn, attorney. Started fighting crime after the first Blue Bee saved her life.

Smash Lass – Super strength, invulnerability. Real identity Mica Dyson, heiress. Joined the Legion to be a good role model for others.

Prodigy – Possesses the ability to learn any skill after seeing it done once, genius. Real identity Janice Vaughn, graduate student. Joined the legion because she felt it was the most logical use of her peerless intellect.

Arc – A living dynamo, lightning boots, enhanced vision. Real identity Roy Richmond, electrical engineer. Helped found the legion as a way to do the most good for the most people.

Lt. Laser – A being of coherent light. Real Identity Seymour Kemp, retired astronaut. Uses his powers in service to his country.

The Bad Guys

The Spectacular Spelunker – Stalactite gun, mole-dozer, cavemen. Real identity Ringo Phelps. Steals stuff because he likes stuff.

Chem Queen – Total control over body chemistry, ability to create exotic chemical compounds from elements at hand. Real identity Cherry Bloom. Eco-terrorist because she hates the corporations that poisoned her.

Heinrich Sterngeist – A former Nazi rocket man who stole a flying saucer he was studying at area 51 and built an alien empire. Seeks to cement galactic alliance by leading a united alien plan to take over the earth.

The Prime Mover – Tech genius, mob boss, master warlock. Real identity unknown. Doomsday afficianado.

The Four Horsemen of the Prime Mover:

War – A fallen angel possessing an alien mercenary outfitted with neutron star armor.

Pestilence – A cloud of virulent airborne diseases enclosed in a humanoid force field.

Famine – The ghost of an Irish peasant. His touch brings instant starvation.

Death – A demon possessing a futuristic android composed of self-replicating nanites. Can kill anyone instantly by saying their name. 

Coming soon! 

Dragons Gate starts here!

I've hinted a few times before on my blog that I planned to return to the Bitterwood universe for a new series of novels. It's been almost ten years since I was last writing the Bitterwood series, and memory fades. But lately I've been listening to DragonForge on Audible, recorded by the talented Eric Joseph Chancy, and rediscovering the elements that by far make the Bitterwood series my best selling books. The premise still feels fresh--epic fantasy in a post-apocalyptic world, written using the rules of science fiction. But what really connected with me listening to DragonForge were the characters. Bitterwood's growling intensity, Graxen's lovesick mooning, Blasphet's scenery chewing villainy, Pet's growth from pampered man/child into a man willing to die for what he believes. Jandra discovering her powers, Zeeky's fearlessness, and the interplay of the valkryies who guard the Nest all stand out. And on top of all this are Burke and Anza, probably two of the most morally complex characters I've ever put onto the page. Burke hates dragons every bit as much as Bitterwood, but he's too smart to fight a war that can't be won, and deeply feels his responsibility for every life he puts in danger. His role as the reluctant mastermind of the human rebellion still resonates with me.

So, for over a year now, I've been plotting out a new trilogy featuring these characters called Dragons Gate. I kept thinking of scenes where the novel had to begin, but a lot of these scenes felt more like epilogues to the previous novels rather than fresh beginnings. They served as a bridge between the two series, but I worried that the new book might suffer if I spent the first third of the book recounting backstories. So, over the rest of the year, I'll be presenting a series of novelettes, novellas, and short stories collectively called "Dragons Gate: Preludes & Omens." Right now, I've got at least three planned, Hunted, telling the story of Graxen and Nadala, Haunted, following up on Bitterwood's attempt at a new life as a farmer, and Hurt, focusing on Anza. I've got faint inklings for a fourth story as well, but it's still in development, so I'm not quite ready to announce it, and may yet decide to integrate it into the larger trilogy.

The first of the Dragons Gate: Preludes & Omens stories, Hunted, is now available on Kindle. At the end of DragonForge, the sky-dragons Graxen and Nadala fly off, and their fate is never addressed in Dragonseed. This picks up their story several months later. Nadala is pregnant and no longer able to safely fly. They're lost in the Cursed Mountains, looking for shelter in the face of an impending storm. Worst of all, Graxen isn't a great hunter, and now that Nadala is grounded their food is running out. All that's standing between them and starvation is a stag Graxen has spotted at the edge of a forest. What he doesn't know is that as he's hunting the stag, something a lot more dangerous than a dragon is hunting him.

I was nervous about writing characters I hadn't written in so long, but the second I started typing it was like welcoming old friends back into my life. Any worries I had about committing myself to a new epic fantasy trilogy instantly vanished to be replaced with enthusiasm. I can't wait to write these books because I can't wait to read them!

And now, you don't have to wait to get started with the first story in the new series. Read it today on Kindle! And, if you want to read future Dragons Gate: Prelude & Omens stories for free, sign up for my newsletter! Subscribers to my newsletter will be sent links for free downloads for the tales before they go on sale on Amazon. Free and early not enough for you? Send me an email if you want to be a beta reader for future tales.

Victory First Draft Complete!

It took two weeks longer than I'd expected, but Victory: Lawless Book Three now has a complete first draft! I finished the draft last Thursday. I'm taking a break from the book this week as I head out of state to attend a wedding this weekend, but will dive into the second draft next week. I still have a not impossible hope of finishing this in time to be selling copies at ConCarolinas the first weekend in June, but I really need to see how well the next draft cleans up. I'd rather take an extra few weeks to get this perfect rather than just getting it "good enough" in order to hit an arbitrary deadline. On the other hand, I have nearly six weeks before the con, which is a pretty decent chunk of time to get this right. 

I'm also happy to say that, now that I've written book three, I feel there's plenty of material still to explore and already have the first broad ideas of what's going to go into book four. 

Want to be one of the first to find out more about future books in the series? Sign up for my newsletter!  

Lawless update, Victory cover

Victory: Lawless Book Three is progressing nicely. Subscribers to my email newsletter got the first peek at the cover last week and a link to a preview chapter. If you're not a subscriber yet, drop me a line at nobodynovelwriter (at) yahoo (dot) com to sign up!

Anyway, this is the cover as it currently stands. I may yet tweak Golden Victory's costume to give it a little more flair. The original version has a big red "V" on his back that I ultimately decided against. But I may yet give him a different color collar and wrist bands. Still, you get the basic concept.

Despite having Golden Victory on the cover, the book isn't really about him. It continues the story of Big Ape and Cut Up Girl and places a spotlight on Screaming Jenny. She's left the Lawful Legion on medical leave. Her mind and memories have been messed up both by government brainwashing and by a telepathic supervillain who altered her personality back in the first book. Now, she's struggling to sort out what her real memories are and discovering they are even more disturbing than her false ones. If she's ever to find peace, she has to learn the whole truth about her past, even though uncovering these truths reveals a dark and dangerous secret that Golden Victory would rather leave hidden. 

I'm currently still slogging through the first draft. I'd hoped to finish before the end of March, but the story keeps growing on me. The problem with having a team called the Lawful Legion is that it kind of implies the team has a lot of members. I've probably mentioned over a dozen team members in previous books, and in this book a lot of them take part in the plot, which is making my nerd heart happy, but man it's a lot of work to give a dozen characters back stories and meaningful arcs and keep the flow of the story moving forward. If I had a time machine, I'd go back ten years in time and tell my younger self, "Name the team of respected heroes the Cosmic Quartet. You'll only have to come up with four origin stories!"

Also, if I had a time machine, I could jump forward two months and read the final book so I'd have some clue how all this ends. I mean, I know how the main plot thread should wrap up, but there's also a love triangle thing going on as a major subplot and I still don't have a clue whose heart I'm going to break in the final chapter. I also need to find a way to resolve Jenny's emotional pain without trivializing it or making it feel like the peace she finds is a peace everyone in similar pain can find. Ultimately, her arc is about living with trauma. The necessities of story telling require a victory. The practical experience of my own life is that some times there is no victory, only survival.

Ah well. It wouldn't be any fun to write if the stories were easy to tell. Forward!