Another One Complete

I have spent the last few weeks finishing the first draft of a novel.

This is the second book in a series that I've written while the first is being critiqued, and I'm hoping to share it with people soon. I have one person that will likely read it when I'm finished editing, and I'm excited to see what she'll say.

Finishing a novel is always a great high for me, and it's added to my current manic state. I haven't slept a lot since I finished, but my sleep schedule is starting to stabilize a little. I'm at least sleeping reasonable amounts of time even if it's not reasonable times of the day.

I've dived into my editing process, and I'm currently marking up a printout of the novel—two hundred pages double-spaced and double-sided in a binder. I'm going through it with a pen and highlighters to mark up what needs to be fixed or rewritten. Then I'll make the edits before I hand it off to my critique partner. 

I already have ideas for books three and four. I'm harvesting characters from other novels of mine that didn't work and creating romance novels with them. One of the two books will be characters from a sci-fi/fantasy series I had to scrap and their love story in a contemporary setting. The other will be another character from that series and the basic story from a book I wrote five years ago that fell flat on its face. I hope to make it work this time with new characters and an updated plot. I'll be writing the latter book next.

The next book is calling to me while I work on editing the one I just finished, but I don't want to overload myself, so I'm focusing on one at a time. Once I finish editing and get my critique partner reading, I'll start on book three.

Writing this series, and taking the original book into a series, has been a delight. I can't wait to continue.

Photo Credit Kristin Hardwick