Progress Report

 I haven’t been on the blog or Twitter as much lately, and I apologize for that! I’ll be trying to interact more in the next few months.

Compelled, Touched #4, has been through the beta readers and editing for a bit, but due to some technical issues the release was held up. I am hoping to have it out within the next day or two to Ravynheart’s Sidhe Elites, and then in a week or so to Amazon. (Listen to this podcast to find out about the Sidhe Elite and how you can become one!)

That leaves us with book 5 in each of the three series, Rise of the Unseelie, Touched and Champion of the Sidhe. All three series are going to ‘end’ with the fifth books, but the story is not ‘over’ with the completion of those series. The characters will combine into a new 3 book series which will bring a lot of action, suspense, and answers to some lingering questions. We are in the planning stage with those three books, and we have the overall story arc worked out.

But in the meantime, we are finishing up the writing on books 5 of the current series. All three books will crossover heavily, as the story lines collide, which is why I am working on them together. My goal is to have the drafts of all three books completed by the end of November. So, to have a little fun, and to keep myself on track, I thought I’d keep a running update on my progress here on the blog!

With each of the fifth books I am aiming for a word count between 10,000 and 20,000, but as always, the stories take as long as they take. I never want to include fluff to reach a word count goal. At the same time, I won’t cut any of the action or character development short to keep it ‘on budget.’ The Rise of the Unseelie books have been tending to run longer than the others because there is so much character work going on.

So here is where things stand at the moment:

Captivated, Touched #5 is only at 3205 words. I have the beginning and a couple of key scenes written, so I still have a lot to do here.

Keeper of Secrets, Champion of the Sidhe #5, is at 7884. This is my current focus with my writing at the moment. I have the beginning and the end pretty close to final form, and some middle scenes that will need rewritten. There is also a major fight scene yet to be written. I also need to finish the scene where Lugh and Donovan finally meet after all this time.

Uprising, Rise of the Unseelie #5, is mostly written and is currently at 11,889 words. I’ll have Donovan’s side of the encounter with Lugh to write. There are some bridging scenes to complete that link up the current scenes. Also Malcolm has a big discovery scene that I still have to write as well.