Time For An Update!

     It’s six months into the year, halfway finished, and I figured this was as good a time as any to do an update of what I have been up to. First, as a reminder — as those of you know — I revealed the cover of my upcoming contemporary romance novel, On the Night of the Twelfth. I have gotten it back from the editor. So now I’m back into making changes, corrections, and all those wonderful things that come with editing. I’m hoping to have a release date, but I expect near the end of summer is what I will shoot for. As a bonus, editing the first book let me fill in some plot holes with the second book, given me the plot for the third book, and gave me an idea for a sixth book.

     I do not have to tell you how it feels for an original quartet idea to just become a future series. I’m not sighing about it, but clearly, there are more stories to tell, and I will be the one to write them. So, I would say this is all the better in the end. Who knows, I might get a spin-off idea. It has been known to happen, right? But I’m getting ahead of myself.

     What is truly new and what I have not mentioned is the novel project I am writing within the writing course I am taking. To summarize, over a decade-long story, I finished a writing course. Once completing that course, I started a second course that would allow me to finish a novel and see what it would feel like to work with an editor. The steps I would take to go the traditional publishing route. Which is great, but I am still standing at the door trying to decide if I want to open it. There is also the flip side where I will admit working with my instructor/editor on this story helped make things easier when it was time to find an editor for On the Night.

     Now, as for this course project. I won’t say much to spoil it, but I will say that I wanted to do the story from the view of a child who was coming into his own regarding the decisions made by his parents. Would he unconditionally stand by his parents? Would he go against the grain and stand on the opposite side of his parents? In facing the crossroad of a major decision, will he know which decision to make and stand by that decision? Or will outside forces be the ones who make the decision for him? It sounds like any coming-of-age story, I know, but I’m going to put my own spin on those questions and write the main character as a fifteen-year-old boy.

     I don’t have to tell you how much my instructor/editor found this idea very entertaining. Probably not as much as I did.

     Since that time, she has found Titus to be great, his best friend, Omer, to be the right amount of support and comic relief, and the problem very believable. It’s everything I ever wanted with all my writing insecurities. So, along with editing, I am writing out the ending for this very lovely tale. Who says it can’t be done? In the meantime, the due date for the ending to be sent off is in August, so I will probably bring up this project again around September. You know, to let her get back to me, and for me to see what she says.