Somehow, impossibly, penning the end 🖋
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In This Newsletter
- Writing Updates
- Life Updates
- The Narratess Sale
- Sapphic Fantasy Recommendations - Year of the Mer
- Other Sales / Bundles
Writing Updates
It's drafted!! Yes, this is the big reason I haven't been doing my regular newsletter. I've been mostly head down on my draft. I really wanted to get it DONE. And now it is! I finished it last week and it clocked in at 110,337 words. The most difficult book I've ever written, the most personal book I've written, the most complex book I've ever written--somehow, impossibly, I have written it.
Every time I start on a new novel, it seems impossible. I know I can do it. I know I've done it before. I've finished multiple novels! But every time, starting a new one seems impossible. But this one, especially, seemed more difficult than climbing Everest.
It took me 133 hours to draft this book based on Pacemaker Press's estimates and an average of 830 words per hour. But it's DONE.
I really, I really went to town on Friday and Saturday as you can see from my calendar.
Sunday, I made myself a cake to celebrate and have taken the last week to catch up on other things I let fall by the wayside while I was busy drafting.
It's gluten free box cake, but I doctored it up by adding instant pudding mix, an extra egg, and mashed bananas to the mix and then baking it a little longer than normal. I made the frosting, too, and added even more bananas to the frosting. The frosting is supposed to be a lavender color but my phone camera didn't properly get it. It was, however, absolutely delicious.
Shackles and Shards was intended to be one book. I wanted to write a series of interconnected stand alone novels, each with their own protagonist, taking place in their own region of Ahnlisen, and each being one part of a larger story but able to stand on their own as a complete narrative. It was to be seven books long.
But now Shackles and Shards is going to likely be four books. So it's going to be a mini-arc within the series. Whoops. But it will be worth it, I promise.
