First and foremost, I would like to share with you all that the first draft of The Prophecy is finished! Of course there’s still plenty to be done, but it’s an exciting milestone nevertheless. Things are moving along!

In other news, I just received a folder full of old stories I wrote when I was around 12 or 13 years old. A friend of mine and I would create our own little books, magazines, newspapers, etc, then send them to each other by way of our fathers, who worked together. This friend’s mother was just going through old stuff, getting their house ready to be put on the market. When she found all of the stories I had sent her daughter near on two decades ago, she saved them for me. It’s a fun little trip down memory lane, but I also have to say, having illustrated my own works, I am rather impressed with my drawing skills at that age!

Here are pictures from a few of my favorites (not the best quality photos)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I confess I didn’t do much writing in the last couple of months. I’ve been trying to split my time, fitting in reading for pleasure, betareading another author’s work, and playing video games.

The video games shouldn’t distract me any longer – it’s just that new installments of two series that I really enjoy were released recently. But I have finished Dragon Age: Inquisition, and only the first episodic “book” of Dreamfall: Chapters (which fans having been waiting TEN YEARS for!) is available at this time. I played through that and am eagerly awaiting the next piece, which currently has an expected release date of “Soon.”

But fear not, the dry spell seems to have come to an end! These last few days I have been writing more and more. The first draft of The Prophecy is now weighing in at 67,000 words, and is probably about 85% done. I hope to have it completed within the next few weeks.

Of course then there will be revision, followed by some more revision, and maybe throw in another round of revision for good measure. I’m not sure I’ll quite make my anticipated release period of Spring 2015, but at the rate I’ve been working these last several days, I don’t think I’ll miss it by much. Maybe I’ll even surprise myself and get it out there sooner than I think.

In other words, Book II of The Sentient Prophecy has an expected publication of “Soon-ish”!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I left Anna and some friends boiling over with righteous indignation, and someone Sentient is going to have to pay…

Ever since announcing an anticipated release date in Spring 2015 for The Prophecy, I find myself doing plenty of things other than writing. Mostly reading books by other people and playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third installment in one of my absolute favorite video game franchises. I swear before the Muses that I will force myself to get back to writing once I have finished the DA:I, which has the potential for 150 hours of game play. Don’t worry, I’m already about 36 hours into it 🙂

In the meantime, I’d like to invite you to stroll on over to another blog of mine. I started it while waiting to get the draft of The Sentient back from the editor, when I didn’t want to continue work on the sequel until I made sure there would be no changes suggested that would affect details in the second book. On Oh My Blog! I posted about random things I find interesting (such as the Cardiff Giant, Rasputin, and the evolution of vampires in popular fiction). I had a lot of fun doing it! It’s been a while since I’ve added any new posts, as I’ve been writing (okay, okay, and reading and playing Dragon Age) since then. I’d like to return to it sometime, though.

Please feel free to check it out while I work on getting back to work!

You can find the blog here: http://ohmyblogjc.blogspot.com/