Behold! I have written a book!

It’s been a long, hard slog, but the second draft of Cinder, Book Four of the Dragon Apocalypse, is finally finished. If I’m being objective, the second draft didn’t take an unusual amount of time compared to some of my previous books. I normally give myself two to three months for a second draft, and I finished this one in about 8 weeks.

The main reason it was challenging was that this is the first time I’ve ever written a fourth book in a series. The Bitterwood series has four books, but it’s a trilogy plus a prequel, and the prequel mostly stands alone. Writing the third book in a trilogy is challenging because you’ve got so many plotlines and characters you’ve got to juggle. Writing the fourth book in a series felt exponentially more complicated. Bitterwood had a pretty large cast by the time I got to the last book in the trilogy, but most of the cast knew each other and were all gathered together in a few key locations. With the Dragon Apocalypse, I have characters literally scattered to Hell and back, and, thanks to one of the cast members being a time traveler, they're spread out over a whole century of plot points. Half the cast from previous books are dead now, but since a big part of the adventure takes place in Hell, dead characters have plenty of opportunities to make guest appearances.

But, hooray, it’s now a real novel! My first draft was most of a book, but the last few chapters existed only as a few lines of summary. Now, I’ve actually got 25 completely written chapters, 117k words of truly epic madness. I’m ready to start sending out chapters to advance readers to get feedback as I work through a third draft. I know there’s still several big things I need to fix. First and foremost, I feel like my main character is a little two dimensional. Cinder is the daughter of Infidel and Stagger, a child conceived in the land of ghosts, with the power to walk between the worlds of the living and the dead. I worry she comes across as more of a plot device than a fully fleshed out character. The plot can’t move forward without her making certain choices. Usually when I write a character like this they have a perverse tendency to reject the choices I’ve made for them and carve out their own paths, throwing my carefully crafted plotlines into chaos. Cinder proved worryingly cooperative. I can’t really flesh out my worries here without introducing spoilers, since her character arc and the plot are so tightly integrated. I need to somehow get deeper into her head. Even better, I need to get deeper into her heart. She’s got a certain stoic toughness that she carries well, but I need to get past that into some of her darker thoughts. I need to know when and why she’s afraid of herself. I toy with this at a few points in the book, but pull back because I don't want her seeming whiny. Once I get the right mix of self confidence and self doubt nailed, I think she’ll be fine.

If you haven’t read the previous three books in the series, this next paragraph will come across as gibberish. If you have read the previous books, here’s some of the good stuff awaiting you: Menagerie is back, and totally bad ass. Infidel gets to garb up after twenty years of retirement to knock sense into some really, really, really big dragons. Slate and Sorrow pick up their flirtatious “are we enemies or are we allies” romance, joining forces to survive in the treacherous wastelands of Hell as they search for the soul of Stark Tower. The Black Swan is back in all her time travelling glory, making a real mess of past, present, and future. Oh, and Zetetic the Deceiver returns, with his madness cranked up to eleven. By the end of the book, I kill about half of the people mentioned on this list. The rest don’t get off quite so lucky.

Enough! There is still a great deal of work to do! Third, fourth, and fifth drafts must be produced, then line edits and galley proofs. Then, finally… I unleash the Apocalypse!

Dragon Apocalypse Book Four, second draft: More than half done!

I've got fifteen chapters rewritten. My first draft was only twenty two chapters, so I'm well past the halfway mark even though I'll be adding chapters on this draft. I'm still a little fuzzy on whether or not to add a few scenes, but I expect this will probably wind up being 25 or 26 chapters long.

My biggest challenge with this draft is turning out to be the difficulty of juggling all the plots. I've got Slate and Sorrow off on one adventure, Gale Romer and her children tackling another quest, Infidel's daughter Cinder teaming up with the ghost of Father Ver for a major plot thread, and the Black Swan pursuing a goal that takes her into conflict with all the others, eventually. I've got all the plots figured out nicely, and know where they intersect. But, since all four plots are unfolding at the same time, there's a real challenge to figuring out what information to present in what order. I'm tackling Cinder chapters and thinking, hmm, maybe this should be before the Romer chapter. But the Romer chapter needs to be before the Sorrow chapter. And the Sorrow chapter works best if its before the Cinder chapter. Yeesh.

The problem is that a reader's attention is like a small door. If every one of my plots try to jam into the door at the same time, none of them are getting through. Oh well. I'll get it worked out. And, if it's not working... there's always draft three.

Cinder: Book Four of the Dragon Apocalypse. The second draft begins!

I've used my three-day weekend to plunge into the second draft of my fourth Dragon Apocalypse novel, Cinder. I just finished the third chapter, and am mostly happy with how things are turning out. My biggest difficulty is still the sheer size of the cast. I've got seven Romers, Brand, Bigsby, Slate, and Sorrow in Hell, along with Walker, a trio of demons, and a hundred rescued pygmy slaves. Trying to craft smooth dialogue with so many players on stage is challenging.

Fortunately, from this point on, most of the chapters have the cast splitting up and a lot of the scenes only have two or three characters to deal with.

The most important thing I've written so far, however, is the outline I cobbled together Friday morning. Looking back on the first three novels, I realized I had left out a pretty major plot thread I'd introduced all the way back in the first book, and had to figure out where I was going to weave it back in. To be honest, I'd considered introducing the thread while writing the first draft of this book, but decided to leave it out because the plot was already fairly complex. Now that I've had time to think about it, though, it's the only plot thread that can truly bring the novel to a satisfying conclusion. The ending I had in mind did a nice job of wrapping up the main plot thread of this book, but left a lot of the characters kind of hanging. Now, I know how to write a final scene that will have just the right balance of tragedy and hope that gives all the characters left alive at that point a role to play.

The next two weekends have back to back science fiction conventions, Illogicon in Raleigh and MarsCon in Williamsburg. I'm going to do my best to keep the book rolling forward despite this. If I can produce three chapters each week, I should have a full second draft by the end of February.

Onward!

Scenes from my time as Piedmont Laureate

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a 18,000 word post...

There's a Red Monkey Tavern in Raleigh, decorated with monkeys and dragons. It's like eating inside one of my novels.

I saw my name in the paper a lot this year.

I mean, I do most years, but this year no crimes were alleged.

Novel fuel.

James Maxey named Piedmont Laureate! Hell freezes over.

Ghost bunny.

Ghost house.

I really should write more stories about giant bees.

I am, in fact, writing a story about hummingbirds.

Dragons in Raleigh!

The Tin Woodsman endorses Bad Wizard.

Talking about superheroes.

The only decent photo I've ever managed to take of the moon.

From Mordecai House. "Thinking of Thee!"

I sometimes think they only reason they make dolls is to provide props for haunted houses.

I was tickled to spot "The Mysteries of Udolfo." Jane Austen fans will know why.

While teaching my ghost story workshop, I managed to photograph a ghost. More or less.

If you want to catch light in a jar, bring a jar.

Burwell School, "Silent as Dust."

What I was wearing under my clothes my whole time as Laureate.

You'll never guess where I hid the big pencil.

I'm back!

This week, I turned in my final blog post as the 2015 Piedmont Laureate. Whew! It's been a blast, but there's no question it also ate into my writing time far more than I had anticipated. I did close to thirty events in 2015, counting readings, workshops, signings, panel discussions, dinners, and speaking to government boards. It turns out that constantly talking about writing satisfies a lot of the parts of the brain that ordinarily need actual writing for stimulation.

I'll still have a few events next year, including my normal science fiction convention circuit, but my real focus is going to be cranking out as many publishing worthy words as possible. I've kicked things off by spending the last few weeks heavily editing my short story "The Jagged Gate." This morning, I sent it out to spend a few weeks in a slush pile. Keeping my fingers crossed that I can see an acceptance letter sometime in January, but even if it doesn't sell, it felt good getting back into the grind of going through a story again and again to fine tune it.

The version I started working on was pretty good. It was definitely publishable, since I'd already sold it to an anthology. Unfortunately, that anthology got delayed and delayed, to the point that I finally asked for the rights to revert back to me, since I didn't want to leave the story stranded.

When I reread "The Jagged Gate" after close to two years of not thinking about it, I discovered once more that "publishable" isn't a synonym for "perfect." The previous draft now felt wordy, which often happens with my first person narrations. In letting the character have his own voice, I also have been known to allow my character to meander a bit. So, I decided to do an aggressive edit, reading the story out loud multiple times to remove any stray words or phrases I could. I also realized that my narrator was a bit too passive. He's telling us a story about someone he knows, and while he has a choice to make at the end, I didn't really do much to show how the events of the story were changing him. This time, I was able to establish a subtle conflict between who he thinks he is when the story starts and who he becomes thanks to the relationship he develops in the story. I'm hoping it's not too subtle a transition, but I also didn't want to hit the reader over the head with his "journey." As for the female lead, Nyx, she was quirky and interesting throughout, but there was a revelation in the last few pages showing a hidden side to her past that I didn't really do enough to foreshadow. I think I've fixed that in this draft, without waving a big red flag reading "tragic past!"

OK. Story in the mail. What next? Another story! Forward!

Reading update

There's not been a lot of activity on this blog since I became Piedmont Laureate. I write a blog at piedmontlaureate.com that I update every two weeks, always on writing related subjects. I don't have a lot of writing updates to go into here, since I've not written any fiction since I finished the first draft of the fourth Dragon Apocalypse novel back in April. I've got a lot of laureate events lined up for the fall and into early December, so, realistically, it will be early next year before I focus on my own writing again.

While I haven't done a lot of writing this year, I do feel like I've got a decent amount of reading done since April.  I've reread some books that were important to me, like Winesburg, Ohio and Huckleberry Finn. I've discovered Thomas Hardy after somehow missing him all my life, and have now read Far from the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Currently, I'm about 75% of the way through the Brothers Karamazov.

Karamazov has been both a delight and a slog. Oddly, some of my favorite parts have been chapters where absolutely nothing happens, and it's just one of the brothers giving a long monologue on philosophy. Dostoevsky knows how to ask truly monumental questions, like, if God exists, is there any evidence whatsoever that he is loving or just? I never feel as if he's stacking the deck in favor of one answer. The slog part has been that occasionally he seems to forget which book he's writing, and goes off on a tangent exploring the life of some minor character in sidetracks that last half a dozen chapters. If the book had no plot whatsoever, I could just roll with the flow. But, there is a plot, which makes the long diversions into stuff unrelated to the plot aggravating.

Hardy has been my favorite discovery of the summer. Holy cow, this guy can write! He has, for me, a nearly perfect blend of setting and character, with a marvelous gift for weaving in a ton of detail without bogging down the flow of his tale. I'd been told his works were somewhat bleak--which they are--but hadn't been told they were also funny. He's got a wonderful gift for banter between his characters and a gift for irony. Hardy also has a gift for capturing beauty. His descriptions of the English countryside are breathtaking. Then, amid all this beauty, he will systematically destroy a character you to like and admire, tearing away their dignity, finances, and health item by item until they are brought to utter ruin and die without redemption. And Lord help you if you're an infant in a Thomas Hardy novel. You've got the life expectancy of a gerbil, and not a healthy one. Hardy definitely had a lot of anger toward societal institutions. You can see he views the morality of his day as immoral to the core, and the church, government, and even colleges as being designed to reward the undeserving elite and punish the striving poor. I see in his writing precursors to great social justice novels like Grapes of Wrath or the Jungle. I intend to read more of his novels when I'm done with Karamazov. I'm still hoping he's got at least one baby born in the course of a book who makes it out alive.

Even when I'm writing, I try to keep reading, but it's been an interesting experience reading during half a year of not actively working on a book of my own. I've pretty much been working on one writing project or another without a break for close to fifteen years, so often when I read I'm placing things in the context of what I'm currently working on. I'll hit a line in what I'm reading that reminds me of something a character in my current work might say of feel and the next thing I know I'm off in my imagination, completely losing the thread of the book before me. It's kind of nice to make it through some of these big, meaty novels without that distraction. That said, I'm definitely finding inspiration as well. My work has never shied away from asking big questions, but I've always made sure that I'd follow those deep questions with scenes of intense action or comedy, almost as if I feel like I owe my reader a treat for forcing her to sit through a few paragraphs of philosophy. I've written a lot of entertaining books. But, have I ever truly attempted to write a great one?

Dragon Apocalypse, Book 4: 90451, first draft finished!

With one final writing session on the last day of April, I bring my first draft to a stopping point. Technically, there are still probably two chapters to write, but at this point all that's left for those are choreography. I know who's fighting who, I know my big last second twist, I know my final scene, even if I'm still not exactly sure what the characters will decide to do in the last sentences.

The last few chapters have been pretty satisfying. Stagger and Infidel were reunited for most of a chapter and got to talk out some family issues. Sorrow was off stage for a good deal of the time, but when she did reemerge, she'd regained the intensity of purpose that always made her so compelling for me.

Oh! And Menagerie also gets in a moment of glory. I like having him around. He's competent, and good at fixing problems, but also knows when to shut up.

I'm going to ignore the book now for an indeterminate time. It's possible I could start a second draft in June, but I may wind up putting it off until August. June is getting really full of Piedmont Laureate events and I'll be at the beach two weeks in July. It won't hurt to let things percolate.

My biggest worry about the book right now is that it lacks a strong central character. That's not necessarily fatal to a book. Dragonseed is a good example of a book I've written with no single main character. But, the Bitterwood books always had an ensemble cast, while my Dragon Apocalypse Books have been focused more on single characters. Infidel stars in Greatshadow, Stagger gets more of the spotlight in Hush, and Sorrow is present in all but a handful of scenes in Witchbreaker. I had originally intended to focus on Slate, but the story was simply bigger than him. The Black Swan became my back up central protagonist, and she does drive a lot of the plot, but she's just crossed a line, a line Sorrow straddled in Witchbreaker, where her drive to complete an all important mission has stripped away most of her humanity. It was possible to tell a story of Sorrow fighting to recover her humanity in Witchbreaker, but the Black Swan is never going to be able to call herself human ever again. This makes her tricky to identify with.

I'm hoping as the book percolates between drafts that I might find some way to make people care about the Black Swan, versus just caring about what she's trying to do, which is save the world. Or, I might decide that the story is fine being split between the various cast members.

If any of you encounter me this summer, and I have a haunted look in my eye, you'll have some clue as to what's going through my mind.