I’ve spent more time working on my most recent MS, The Obsidian Pyramids, than any other book in my past. It even feels like I’ve spent more time on this one than the others combined. Unfortunately, the querying process hasn’t gone much better than before (though I did at least receive a couple personalized rejections for the first time ever, so maybe I should count that as a win).

But the world moves on, and the time approaches when I need to focus on the next project. I’ve worked on my next book a fair amount (mostly pre-writing), but I haven’t been able to get myself to stick with it consistently like I have in the past. Part of that is my career – I started a big, new project a month ago and I’ve been devoting most of my evenings working on it. But the hardest part is convincing myself I’ll find more success with book 8 than numbers 1-7. Creating a novel takes a lot of time and effort, and it can be hard to ignore distractions and put words to page (screen? hard disk?) when I expect only a handful of people will ever read it.

Still, I must push forward. I am excited about the premise, and I think the characters should be pretty awesome, but even though I’ve spent a good deal of time “designing” them, and I know about them, I don’t know them, know them yet. Not like my already-written characters. These new people seem so distant right now.

Anyway, I just sent out round 3 of queries for TOP, so now I hope I can get myself to fully focus on my new WIP, The Plague of Cataclysms. At the very least, I think I’m winning with the title…