I know I said I was going to update this blog more often a few weeks ago, then didn’t. Well, I got busy. With the end of the year on me, I started to feel the press of time with respect to my second book (which is the first in a series). Oddly enough, I never intended it to be a book. Really, I was just aiming at writing practice.

Earlier this year, I think June? I finished the first full draft of an epic fantasy novel and sent it out to beta readers. The feedback was very positive, but pointed out a lot of problems. Problems that are likely beyond my skill to fix, just now. So, I set it aside in order to focus on more immediate issues, like making sure I was still employed come August and the ducks had a place to live before the snow hit the ground. However, at about the end of July a funny thing happened. In a non-writing related conversation with a friend, I said: “You know, the funny thing about witch hunts is that sometimes you find one.” Well, that was it. It grabbed my attention. Then, perhaps a few days later I got a DM from someone telling me I should write a series on Channillo.com. I concluded that it would be something to try, so I sat down to see what my silly little quote might turn in to.

At first, I wasn’t really sure, except that I liked the concept and characters. Since I was putting this out for sale right away, I decided a nice book cover was in order, so I bought one. Unfortunately, I bought one that didn’t quite match what I had in mind, so given that I had a cover and no story, I wrote enough of the story to fit the cover. Much cheaper than spending a lot of cash on a custom cover for a book I wasn’t even sure would be a book!

For about the first chapter, I figured that if I made sure I was doing a chapter every 3 weeks or so, I could satisfy my Channillo.com goals and also be done with a draft sometime next spring. Yeah, that pretty much didn’t happen. I mean, it did at first, but that second chapter was written the day before my self-imposed due date. I don’t like operating that way, so I set out to write several more chapters, just so I was a little ahead. Then, I went to Kansas City for training, which was cool. Spent all day training, then socialized with co-workers for a while, but I still had hours to myself. So, I sat down to write. I think I knocked out 3 1/2 chapters that week alone (~12K words), My pace slowed a bit in November because of the great programming distraction of NaNoWriMo 2015, but picked up again after I went to Orlando for more training in early December. That time, my pace was more like 2~3 chapters. In any case, I plowed on through December until Christmas day when I sat down to organize a handful of content that had gotten out of order and didn’t fit properly into the timeline. Turns out it wasn’t that far off and a little manipulation put it close. So, yesterday, after getting back home, I realized I was maybe a chapter or two off of hitting the end of the first full draft – so I sat down with my Christmas coffee and went to town.

You know what? I got it. Today I went back over the second half of the book and concluded I needed feedback and to set it down for a while. So. there it is. My second full-draft book is complete – yes loads of work to be done, but the bulk of the story is there, and in only 5 months. Needless to say, I’m over the moon with myself. So what am I going to do with myself while I cool off from Wine Bottles and Broomsticks? Write book 2, of course.

Also – if you’re interested, you can hit http://www.Channillo.com to subscribe and check the series out. In January, I’m going to release one chapter a month. Once it’s all out there, it’ll be on Channillo for a month, then poof – gone. You’ll have to wait until I can figure out how to get it published.