I am slowly but surely making progress on the Ancestors of Jaiya series (prequel to the main Jaiya series). On Memorial Day (US), I finished the rough draft of Scapegoating a Hero, book 3 in this prequel series. I first began work on Hero in January or February of 2017, so this is the longest I’ve ever spent on a book I actually finished.

Hero is like the other books in both series in that it’s about a man and a woman with supernatural powers who fall in love while fighting evil together. But it has more of a political thriller “feel” to it than the other books, which meant that I had to stop every so often and think about the larger implications of what everyone was doing.

I also developed a new rough draft writing technique: using my phone as a word processor with the help of MS Word Mobile, a lap desk and a portable keyboard. It allowed me to write while traveling, although not as much as I would like. It also allowed me to use my big-screen tv as a monitor when I was at home, using wi-fi and a screen-sharing app for my phone. Working from my favorite armchair, in a different room from my desktop computer and the many distractions loaded on it, has been a good experience and I think it has been better for my back and wrists than sitting at the computer all evening was.

Books 1 and 4 in the series are already at the completed rough draft stage, and I am in the early stages of revising Book 1. I have also started writing Saving a Queen, the second book in the series. This one has a more travelogue feel, and involves a hot air balloon.

I also did the math recently and discovered that over the course of my adult life I’ve written something like 983,000 words of narrative prose, counting failed and successful fiction drafts and a historical nonfiction project I wrote 100,000 words on before realizing that I didn’t have anything new to say about the subject. I must confess, I am looking forward to that million-word milestone.

I am also in the process of getting Marrying a Monster, the first novel in the Jaiya series, set as free, and will be participating in some interesting free book promos, so stay tuned for more news!