Happy Beltane!
(As a side note…do you know how hard it was to find a graphical representation of Beltane that didn’t have nekkid folks in it? Yeah. Um. Hard.)
After nearly seven months of writing (okay, so I took Christmas and New Year’s off…), I am happy to announce that I finally finally finished drafting the follow-up novel to ONE KNIGHT ONLY!
*Insert cheers and tossing confetti here*
The final word count ended up at 95,011 but of course that will change when I start editing. I’ve shipped it off to critque partners. I officially started keeping track of my word count on September 30, 2011. I only wrote 627 words that day (but I started with 7,687). Then somewhere in early December, I got bored and skipped ahead to write the bulk of the end. I started with 963 on December 5. I wrote that for about a month and then went back to the main story and started writing more linear again. Looking back at my word tracker, my daily word count was fairly consisted, averagine about 1500 words a day, five days a week. Sometimes I was on a roll and busted the 2k mark. Sometimes I couldn’t get anything going and only wrote 500 words period. What I love about this progress tracker, though, is that I can see how much I wrote and what I wrote. Plus, it gives me somewhat of a navigation tool to see how long it truly does take me to write a full-length novel.
In this case, this book was rather long as I seemed to have more story to tell than I anticipated. Those Elves just took over and elbowed their way into the story. So did the dragons. I’d only meant for them to have a small part but it turns out both Elves and dragons were integral to the climax of the book. Overall, I’m pleased with the outcome. I love my characters. And I enjoy spending time in the “Otherworld” (Faeryland). I’m also very pleased that I’m not done with this world yet. I will be starting book three as soon as I can get together a rough outline. My Elven ranger, though, seems to be asking for a book of his own as does one of the misunderstood bad guys. What’s an author to do? Guess I’ll have to bow down to character pressure and write their books. 🙂
So, would you like to get a sneak peek at the new book? Of course you would! Here are the opening lines from Only For A Knight, sequel to One Knight Only.
Lord Kieran walked through the shadowed halls of the six-thousand-year-old Dark Court palace, his lonely footsteps echoing off the walls. Once, long ago, the palace had been shiny and new, brightly lit and welcoming.
Now it is nothing more than a shadow. A forgotten place. With forgotten folk.
Aside from his steps as he walked down the hall, he could hear the faint flicker of a torch here and there. His elongated shadow splashed along the steel gray walls as he headed toward the throne room. He had been born to the Otherworld before it had split in two. Seelie and Unseelie. Light and Dark. And, some would say, good and evil. Whatever name was used, it mattered not.
