T E Janota Posts

Moving sucks.

But now it is over with! At least the physical part. Pending legal action against the seller of the house… will take time to resolve. Oh, the fun!

Volume 2, Unfinished Business, had an upgrade. I wasn’t completely happy about the depth of Bart’s character. So, now there is more of his personality, personal life, and background about how he arrived at where he is now.

Volume 4, Eternally Touched… maybe too long. but I hope it will be forgiven as it will be the second book featuring Noralee Church, Eternally Blessed, errand girl for the angels, as she desperately tries to have some vague semblance of a personal life while juggling all of the mundane and supernatural duties assigned to her. My last beta reader pointed out that the story was disjointed, without an overriding thread. I believe I fixed that. Now, the woman who plays Snow White at the ren faire is now introduced in chapter one, and her presence is maintained until all of the pieces are assembled to set the full chaos into motion.

Volume 5, Annie’s Little Orphans, needs a minor upgrade in the climax. It’s good now, but it can be taken up a notch.

Volume 6, Outstanding Debt, is in reasonable shape. More depth in the family dynamic needs to be added to really polish it up. That’s been written down on the ‘to do’ list.

Volume 7, Eternally Cursed, needs some restructuring. Similar to Volume 4, the main conflict needs to be set up earlier and given more explanation. All very doable, but I don’t have every detail plotted out now.

And the cutting edge… works in progress…

Volume 8, Asylum Nation, continuing the saga of Jake, Annie, and Evri, refuses to end. It was at 300K words. I made the decision to split it into two books. The second one will be Dread Lord. Work on this is on hold until the wave of revisions is done on previous works.

Slippery Slope was Volume 9, but will now be Volume 10. I can see it being split as well, with Volume 11 having the working title of Patriarch Appropriation.

And the same fate awaits Eternally Lost, previously volume 10, now slotted to be Volume 12. I expect it, too, will be exceptionally long and need to be split. It will spawn volume 13, Eternally Remembered.

Only then will I be able to touch the prequel, volume zero, Kill Moose and Squirrel, to tell the story of how all of this insanity started.

I probably have next to no readers of this blog at this time, but that is okay. I’m going through the motions of trying to have a social media presence. (shudder) Not my strength!

This is a preview of Little Miss Muffin, from Volume two. Isn’t she adorable? (evil laugh.)

I’m hip-deep in Volume 8, Asylum Nation, and it refuses to end. 335k words and growing. I’m making the decision to split the book. Asylum Nation will be the first one, followed by Dread Lord. The bad news? The logical transition between them is a cliff-hanger. The good news? I intend to release both of them as close to simultaneously as practical, so that anyone driven to immediately read how it ends can do so, and not wait for months or even years to find out what happened. Time to renumber the books!

A house was purchased, and we get to do the moving/remodeling and all of that. On top of working and keeping larval humans fed and emotionally satisfied, the remote job is working out nicely… except for giving me time to write.

And now that I am at a chapter breakpoint with the WIP, it is time to revisit earlier books with another wave of revisions. There are always plotlines to tighten and refinements to make. Perhaps my own story will be called “Eternally Revising.”

The above scene is inspired from a moment early in Volume 1: Born Today. The artist who drew this for me, Natalie, was contracted on Fiverr. Here’s her link:

https://www.fiverr.com/freelancers/lialight_?source=gig_page

I’ve mostly been working on beta reads. Volume 3, Eternally Blessed, may get a flavor tuning on storytelling style. Volume 4, Eternally Touched, will be looked at by my absolutely favorite beta reader, Paula, staring in a week and a half. If she pushes the schedule back again, I’m sending Annie after her! I don’t care if she’s a fictional character and Paula is a real woman. I’ll do it! I’m that kind of guy!

Slow progress has continued in Volume 10, Eternally Lost, and Volume 9, Slippery Slope. All of this effort will be worth it in the end. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Beta read of Eternally Touched is in progress. Will get another read going on the new and improved Eternally Blessed next week.

Word counts!

Asylum Nation, Volume 8, is 263k and we aren’t done!

Slippery Slope, Volume 9, is 83k words

Eternally Lost, volume 10, is 70 k words!

And one more more piece of artwork, inspired by Asylum nation!

I just finished a consistency editing pass for Annie’s Little Orphans, Outstanding Debt, and Eternally Cursed. Now, it’s on to new material, where I attempt to work on three side-by-side novels at once!

The current insanity of WIP drafts:

Asylum nation is at 227 K words.

Slippery Slope is at 68K words.

Eternally Lost is at 49K words.

The cover for Book 1 is in limbo, looking for a good copy editor to turn the artwork into a final cover, including title, author, and series information. Hopefully soon!

Yay! The splicing after applying the chainsaw is done. This draft is currently a monster, 247k words. The original version of Eternally blessed, that was split, was around 240k words. so, really what I did, was, create a prequel for it!

This may still work. I have a thought that the longer Eternally Touched will be far more digestible because many of the characters will already be established, rather than it also serving as the introduction to Noralee and the crazy life that she leads.

Now, to apply edits to Eternally Blessed. Counting man hours, I would say that writing this is closer to Eternally Editing, rather than Eternally Writing.

The rewritten Eternally Blessed, rough draft, is done! This version will likely never be seen by anyone other than me, but it is now complete!

There is a second book to spawn, as the last version was being split. The working title is “Eternally Touched”, and it will follow Noralee’s continuing battle to have a life while attending her angelic duties as the lines between business and pleasure, duties and personal fulfillment, intertwine and collide.

I also have to renumber and revise my entire series plan. We are now at a total of 18 planned books, before this is done! I know this is ambitious. I hope it is ambitious-awesome, not ambitious-stupid, but only time will tell!

Progress has been limited as the household is in the process of moving. It is difficult to keep focused on writing when that chaos is looming and the children continue to howl.

Eternally Blessed, the revision/split, is at 84K words. New plotline focuses upon Noralee, her relationship with Charles, her peculiar partnership with Bastet, and dealing with Angelic missions to the Afterlife. The subsequent novel has the working title of Eternally Touched. It’s tricky to come up with titles for the Touch of Eternity series when I have gone with the theme that all titles will start with the word ‘Eternally.’

I’ll probably be commissioning more artwork. That will continue to give me the sense of progress. At this point, the Realm Bound series is looking like it’s planned for 18 total books. I guess one could call that job security!

A scene planned for Asylum Nation. Picture was commissioned. I love it!

https://www.fiverr.com/vik_t0r

Eternally Blessed.

The elements of the story of Noralee Church, the errand girl of the Angels… are all very promising. A wonderful story is there.

But it feels like there’s too much story. The novel is sitting over 240K words now. This story has been through several very large rewrites. And now, I find myself debating yet another drastic change… split the book in half. but not simply stopping halfway through the book… but by plot threads.

It seems that there is so much book, so many threads, that I risk losing and confusing readers.

I dread this, as it feels like it is only barely better than entirely rewriting the book. But, at this point, I feel like have written a series of Eternally Blessed books, and have a trail of discarded novels, each one capturing a piece of what the final novel needs to be, but none actually hitting the mark.

I’ll make it work. But I’m ready to bang my head into the keyboard.