Parting is such sweet sorrow...yet a party can be great fun! What a difference just one letter makes...
Anyway, I remembered that I'd promised to indicate when the different 'parts' of the new book Hope's Light had been posted, for those readers who prefer the previous posting method of many chapters at once which allowed binging the story in larger bursts. As such, yep, Part One is indeed completely posted! It completes with Chapter Four: Enemies.
Considering the complexity of this saga, readers earlier requested a listing of characters. So here's an update for Book 6! Thanks all!
Warning!
If you have not read Books 1-5 (Into The Light, Light's Promise, Call of the Light, Light and Shadow, and The Light Between) then the list below will contain spoilers!!
Well folks, the editing and proofreading of Hope's Light is going great, thanks to our very own Kimmie going (again!) above and beyond while her Inbox gets filled with updates! One proofreading pass has completed, and we're doing (well, Kimmie is doing!) the second round!!
Wanted to drop a quick note, as the draft for Book 6 Hope's Light was completed not five minutes ago! In fact I'm still processing the (rather strong) emotions from the final scene. Whee?
Prompted by a query from an eager reader (hooray for those!!), I thought it time to post another 'here's where it's at' progress statement for Book 6 of the Light Saga, Hope's Light.
As of an hour ago, the draft just crossed 100k words. There's likely at least another 20k to go to wrap up (maybe more?), but it's on the rapid slide to the ending as things all come together. Current plan is to finish the draft by end of summer, and by end of autumn have the entire work proofread and ready to start posting on a regular schedule.
I've been debating this blog post for most of the week, but I believe it needs doing as a warning to folks who may need it.
Before I go on, I must preface with a few details about my father - he's a brilliant man, a scientist, full of great heart and wisdom. He is now in his 80s and he still does meaningful work for a university. But my mom was lost to us a year and a half ago (has it already been that long??), and he is beginning to really feel his age - and at times says he feels lost in a world that has changed so much from what he's known.
Realized this weekend that it's been a year since the last 'Part' of The Light Between was posted. Time flies! Hmm, though some of those pesky airborne black dots may have been from the sack of too-long-ignored potatoes which were tossed out yesterday...
With only a few more days before the deadline for the New Year's Resolution story contest, I want to give a huge shout out and THANK YOU to our beloved organizers: Jill, Emma, and Joanne. You all are amazing and really have outdone yourselves with this effort, huzzah! And additional thanks to all those helped fund it!
Another contest story just went up! Blue Silk is now available.
This entry is quite a departure from my usual writing fare, much to my continual surprise. No angels, no fae, no magic, say what?!? How'd that happen! Truly shocking.
Well, it's been one of those un-fun weeks of dealing with Covid sweeping through everyone at work, and therefore also myself and those at home. Not a horrible case of it for me, fortunately, just mild fever for a couple days, sinus flooding before the rainbow when the clouds parted, and now slow recovery with instant exhaustion after doing anything.
As it's been awhile, thought I'd babble on the current progress drafting Hope's Light. It's going fairly well so far, the draft is somewhere between a third and a half written. Still tons more to do, but it's certainly building that snowball of momentum down the mountainside which becomes the omg avalanche by the end.
As it's been almost half a year (eep!) since the posting of the last part of the latest book, The Light Between, I'd been pondering posting a status update on the next installment, Hope's Light. And as this week a kind reader (hi Bibliophage!) reached out with an inquiry following up with encouragement to post about it, here we go.
For any readers who may have missed it due to the one week allocated to the home page for multi-part stories, the fifth book of the Light series, The Light Between is indeed fully published! From the hit counts it looks like a number of folks who were enjoying it may not have seen that the last couple chapters indeed got posted. Thanks again to Kimmie for all her help! :)
Book 5, The Light Between, has finally reached its completion. For any who have been waiting until it was posted in full to go binge read, the starter pistol has now fired! Go go go! :)
A huge shout-out and thank you to Kimmie for all her help in getting these last acts posted over the past few weeks. She's been absolutely awesome and tremendous.
Had a couple delays in getting Part 5 of the latest offering finished for posting (as some have noticed). One scene after receiving feedback needed a rewrite which took a couple iterations to (hopefully!) get right. Then my usual proofreader had a week or so of being too busy due to family while also not feeling too great.
Part 2 of the latest saga installment is up! My proofreading friend emailed their last pass' worth of suggestions earlier today, so despite fighting weary eyes after work got those incorporated and did the whole cut-n-paste from Scrivener into a text editor so it all could get dressed for posting. Hopefully I didn't miss any places where italics were supposed to go!!
Thanks again to everyone who's commented and clicked the kudos button so far!! And of course I hope folks enjoy this new one!
It's drafted! Book five, The Light Between, is finally drafted!
If I had more energy, I'd go run about like a lunatic yelling, "Eeeeeee!"
Other than one lunch and errands run on Wednesday, this whole week Monday until now morning to night was dedicated to finishing it before the New Year hit. Omg! Made it! With one day to spare!! I couldn't sleep at all last night due to brain being stuck in high gear on all the details and planning out the final set of scenes completed today. So I may be somewhat loopy at the moment. :)
I realized today when looking at the site's list of my postings that it's been exactly a year since the last set of chapters for the fourth book 'Light and Shadow' was posted. Yikes does time go zipping past!
A consequence of life is the existence of its counterpart: death.
Yesterday my mom passed away.
As I've posted before, she's been in and out of the hospital more times than I can count over the years due to her long struggle with pain-inducing autoimmune issues (fibro, rheumatoid, etc.). This past year her gall bladder made that worse with many gall stones. A week ago bacterial infection got out of control and into her blood, and now she's gone.
The past few days I've taken time off from work to plow ahead with the writing for this extended weekend. Progress has been slow per day but steady, and I'm pretty happy with how it's been going.
Over the past couple weeks I think the last remnants of the post-covid brain fog has finally lifted, and I've even been able to start exercising again. Hooray! As a result Book 5 of the saga is pushing ahead and as of a few minutes ago the draft for Part 3 was completed. This puts the word count at just under 60k and halfway to the suspected finish line.
We've once again come to the time of year which reminds me that while I love almost everything about where we bought a house, there are still a couple things that annoy the ever-living crud outta me about the area.
With the whole discussion regarding unfinished works, I felt that perhaps a status update for book 5 of the Heaven's Light Saga should be put up for anyone curious. It's been a wacky year so far between more work changes and things with family (such as my mom being in and out of the hospital five times since Christmas), so the book hasn't made as much progress as I'd hoped. However Part 1 is almost drafted, needing just one fae party scene (whee!) to finish it out, and the framework for the rest of the major beats through to the ending are mostly figured out.
Decided to sit down today to finally get the idea for the BCTS story contest out of my head and onto a page. In spite of many many breaks to go play with an insistent kitty it somehow got written, and therefore posted. Said kitty brought me a shoestring and a fishie as bribes for attention out of desperation when her ceaseless meows were being ignored (due to music played even louder on the headset). Needless to say, she was rather difficult to say no to.
Anyway, hope folks enjoy. It's called 'The Questing Beast'. :)
It's amazing how time goes fwoooosh. The older I get, the quicker that arrow zips on past.
And thus I realized today when looking at posting dates that four years ago is when I finally decided to be brave enough to quit being a (long time) lurker and toss the two books I'd written out onto BCTS. Four years! Can hardly believe it. I remember being incredibly nervous about doing so too, having debated with myself for months on end. Though admittedly with each additional installment of the story since those nerves still flare. They shouldn't but, well, yep.
Hoping for all to have a safe(!) holiday. I'll admit to being rather bummed by most of my family deciding not to come out and visit due to concern for my Mom, as her health hasn't been good for over a score of years. Understandable and likely the wise course of action, but some of them I haven't seen now for two years and I'd really been looking forward to finally having everyone together. Instead we'll just have to continue holding 'em all in our hearts.
A BIG thank you and shout out to Kimmie for diving all the way back to the beginning of my 'Light' saga and sifting out the abused homophones, tortured commas, and the embarrassingly abundant malformed verbiage!
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