The Other Side of the Rainbow: Book 2 Update!

It’s been a while since my last post—but the good news is, editing is finally done on book 2! It officially has a title, too, and is going to be called Triangle: Book Two of the Azellian Affairs. Within the next month or so, we will be moving from editing to production, which means we should see a finalized book in the next few months—maybe even before summer! 

So everyone who is waiting—your patience will be rewarded soon!  

It wasn’t only Triangle that got entirely re-written in this round of editing, my entire writing process has been completely turned on its head. I have learned that pre-writing stories is impossible. My editor has such an important contribution that I literally can’t write the next book until we are done with the one we are working on. Each story seeds the next—and even though I’ve written nine stories in this series over the years, the changes we made on Triangle not only change Triangle, they change everything I’ve written on the seven other books currently in the queue. Like the planet Pluto, which went from planet to dwarf planet, my already written stories devolved from complete stories to story “seeds”. 

After my initial discouragement, I came to realize that this shift actually is a place of incredible freedom. Yes, it looks like I have to start over, but instead, what happens is that I get to play in a brand new space with these characters and they get to surprise me in new and fascinating ways. They, and the stories, are coming alive in a way that I never expected when I first began the journey to publication so long ago. And somehow, this change in my process, where I write a new story while finishing up the editing on the other one, adds a dynamic excitement to the story arc that I haven’t felt in a long time. These stories are morphing and what is being born is something I don’t know, either—this is a very exciting place to be. 

Somewhere in the middle of all the editing on Triangle, I got book 3 (which is not yet named) written and am now in the pre-editing process, which involves my going through and tweaking scenes. Rough draft to finished copy is yet another part of my process that has changed dramatically. I know that the editor will be changing the story, teasing out the elements I might not even consciously see, which will seed more stories going forward, so my attachment to what I am writing is far less concrete than it used to be. What is the lesson in all of this? Everything changes, and change itself is beautiful. 

For everyone waiting: Book 3 is now officially on my editor’s queue for later this year, so hopefully we’ll get book 3 into editing more quickly than was the case with Triangle. Fingers crossed that we’ll have book 3 out in 2019! 

In the interim, in 2018 Triangle will be the treasure at the bottom of that ephemeral rainbow and the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel!