Did it again with Max’s story

I let the characters talk to me in Duke’s story, but I outlined Max’s story. Let me back up a step.

Hello everyone! Yes, I’m neck deep in working on the 5th book in the Triad series. Seems I only make it to posting news once a year (I’ll work on that), but writing novels takes more thought and planning – and reworking! – than writing short stories.

Max is coming along just fine. I’m going to miss my June 2019 release, but only by a month. I’m still publishing this summer. So far this is my longest book yet, at 95k words right now. I didn’t do that on purpose. As I filled in the details of the outline, the story just kept growing.

I’m missing my release date because after I finished the rough draft, it didn’t feel right. Plenty of parts were spot on where I wanted to go, but others were not. My strong characters turned whinny, my happy characters were stressed and confused, and my calm characters were losing their minds. Sticking to a strict outline just does not work for me. Guiding the development of my characters with a strong hand makes them morph into creatures they were never meant to be.

I had to step back, let the story sit for a few weeks, let my mind stew on it in my sleep, then come back to it. Now I’m rewriting sections as I do my first round of edits, taking out whole clumps that don’t move the story in the right direction. As of today, I’ve gotten through half of the book, cutting out 15k words so far. And I have 95k LEFT! That’s a lot of plots and details to keep track of!

But I’m glad I did it. And you will be glad I did it, too. I’m ditching the parts that felt unnecessary or contrived, leaving and adding to the good stuff. Even though I’m wrangling more words than normal, I’m moving quick. Working in the FLOW. I’m confident you will have Max in your hands this July.

Thanks for your patience and for loving my storytelling!