T.M. Knight's Blog

I know that I haven't posted much about Madison 2 lately, and I deeply apologize for the delay.  I just finished my first set of revisions on a YA novel I wrote, and it's taken precedence lately.  I will say that Madison 2 is still definitely in the works, and I hope to publish it soon, maybe within the next month.  I will do my best to get it published for you, and thank you so much for your patience and understanding!

<3 <3 <3

The book is still progressing better than I could have hoped.  My target is still around 90,000 words, and I hope to expand more sections of story, and add a few more twists to the plot.

This weekend was a little bit of a challenge, because I met up with some family.  It was nice, and they asked how my writing was going.  I felt bad, because I won't tell them my pen name.  The Madison series of books have some grown-up type content in them, and I would prefer that my family didn't read those stories.  I feel like I may have hurt some of their feelings.  One even said 'well if you wrote it, it can't be that bad'.  Unfortunately though, it has more adult content than I would like them to know I write about.

The good thing is that the book I'm currently working on can be read be most any age, as there is no bad language or sexual content.  I'm looking forward to sharing this story with them.

Thank you again readers for waiting patiently for Madison 2.  I'm still waiting to get my edits back from two people, so I have no set timeline for its release.

<3 <3 <3

So I've hit 55,000 words, and I feel like when I hit 60,000 it will all be downhill from there.  I was finally able to write a section that I'd come up with a few weeks ago, but hadn't written enough story yet to reach the point where I could add it.  I'm very much hoping to come up with a couple more clever ideas to go along with it, but the first idea was challenging enough to come up with in the first place.  I just hope that this book is truly as good as I feel it is. :-)  <3

Just this morning I hit 50,000 words, and I'm so excited about it.  The story is coming along so much better than I could have hoped.  I'm back into a writing groove, and I came up with a really cool idea for something that the main character will have to deal with.  I've written down notes about it so that I don't forget.

I'm seriously considering publishing this new book under my real name, so that friends and family can enjoy it too.  It's hard to decide, because I use this pen name to retain my anonymity.  I have no idea how big my new book will be, but if it's as big as hope it is, and think it could be, people could possibly recognize my name.  I could always come up with a new pen name, but I don't know what I would use if I did.

So my laptop died, and I replaced it with a Chromebook.  What's that you say, a Chromebook won't work for my needs!  Yes, well, I have installed Ubuntu on it, and OpenOffice, and FireFox, so I can do everything now I could do on my old laptop, only faster!!!  The only thing I don't like about it is the touchpad.  Thankfully, writing doesn't require too much touchpadding.  And, I got the new lappy-toppy for the reasonable price of $200!!!  Also, even though it has a small hard drive (16GB), for my needs it's totally adequate.  I picked it because the drive is an SSD drive, and it takes all of 2 seconds for my laptop to boot up.  *Does happy dance!*
Anyway, so I moved the book I'm writing over to the new laptop.  On the old one, with formatting and such, it said it was about 130 pages.  Now that I've moved it over, it says it's 157 pages.  So I can't really give good page counts.  The good news is that I'm trying to make this book about the size that Hunger Games was, which was 99,000 words.  So I'm nearly halfway there!  I just hope I can keep writing quality story, and come up with interesting things for people to read.  I'm going back through the start and revising up to a point, at which point I'll be adding more story.  Hopefully that goes well.
Love you readers!!! <3 <3 <3

So I just finished making the changes that my editor and fans have suggested!!!  I've sent it back to my editor to get her take and final sign-off on it!  I am so excited to get this book into your hands, thank you so much for your patience!!!  I wanted to thank everyone involved with the making of this book, and guaranteed the next book will come out much quicker than the last one!!! <3 <3 <3

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I'm still working on the first book of my epic trilogy.  I plan to come back and write a third book in the Madison series, but it may be a while before it happens.  I'm already 120 pages in on the first epic trilogy book after nearly a month-and-a-half, so I should be able to finish it in only a few more months, or so I hope!!!

Thank you again readers, you are what makes writing worthwhile!!! <3

So I've reached 119 pages, which I'm feeling pretty good about!  I was worried that I'd get stuck in my writing, and it seemed like I started to, so I jumped to a different section, and it seems to have helped a lot.  I've never written a story out of order the way I am on this book, and I just have to hope that I can find and fix any continuity issues that may come up.  I'm going to have to re-write some sections, because of things I'm adding in.  But I'm still loving the writing process.  Last night I was able to write while sitting on my balcony, and I got a little sun.  Nice to be able to do that. :-)

And again, I love all you readers out there!!! <3 <3 <3

Yup, I'm still making amazing progress on my current book!  I've been hoping to hit near 300 pages, and it seems like a reasonable pace, because at 100 pages I did a word count, and it was at 35,000 words.  Apparently Hunger Games had a count of 99,000 words.  I will say that my book in general isn't much like Hunger Games, but I definitely want the same kind of feel to it.  I can't stress enough how I don't want my book to be like any other book.  If it isn't original, and doesn't bring something new to the genre then what's the point?

Also, the more I write, the more things seem to fall into place on their own.  Some decisions I made early on in the story have large impacts later, and make the direction of the story that much more interesting.  Most of them seem like I'd really planned them out completely ahead of time.  Some of them I have, but some seem to have fallen into place.  Maybe they were subconscious decisions.

Okay, so I sent the first 90 pages to my editor, and she said that the first 50 pages were perfect, but that the next 40 pages were enough story for the whole rest of the book.  She also said that page 90 was a good place to end the first book.  So I've decided to try and turn the second 40 pages into 250 pages, because my goal is to have about a 300 page book when it's finished.  The nice thing is that I had 2 pages that basically condensed a month's worth of days, and I can make things happen there.  Also, I'm adding more back story, explaining things better, and I've added another character.  I should be able to make it happen, but it will take some doing.  And I'm not going to just write filler, I'm going to make sure that what I add is quality, makes sense within the confines of the story, and is interesting to the reader.  I'm not going to cut corners or settle! <3

So I am totally rocking on this new book.  I'm really happy with how it's turning out!  And this weekend I added 15 more pages to the story.  I have a few concerns with my last thirty or so pages, because I'm not sure if I should be going as in-depth as I am with what is transpiring.  I'm having my editor take a look at it to see if it's the wrong direction to take the book in.  I want the book to create real feelings and emotions for the reader, and be as true to real life as possible, but I still want it to be an enjoyable read.  I don't want readers to be so emotionally drained that they aren't enjoying the experience.  It's a fine line to walk, and I hope that I'm walking it well.

I'm also very excited about certain aspects of the story.  Things that if I read them in a book would make me really intrigued.  I'm trying to make it as interesting of a read as possible, so that you, the readers fall in love not only with the characters, but the story itself.  I want it intricate, interesting, and something that draws you in.