In my last post, I mentioned how draft 2 of Cloudnigh was done. It's out to my beta readers now, who over the course of the next few weeks to months, will give me comments on the manuscript and shed some light on what I need to work on. I already have a fairly healthy list going myself. The next draft is going to be a pretty big one, being it's where I'll fix the remainder of my plot problems and give the writing the attention I've been itching to give it. But that's some time away.

What about right now?

Technically I should be taking a break, but I'm feeling more energized than ever. There's a lot of stuff I want to write, among them the Invincible Kingdom sequels, but that won't be happening until (if) I can manage to sell the book. Right now I'm working on preliminary outlines, which will solidify where I'm going, and allow me to work a few more foreshadowing scenes into the first book. I only had rough notes to go from when I was working on Cloudnigh, and with the amount of times I went back and forth on "SERIES! NO SERIES!" I didn't do as good a job at foreshadowing as I'd have liked. That's fine, though. To me, the story evolves organically enough that I don't need to go too insane with it.

My next project is most likely going to be either Hellion or Delirium Andromeda, the former of which has been kicking around for the past eight years. There are pros and cons to writing both. DA would give me a stand alone novel to try to sell. The flip side is Hellion has been absolutely BURNING to get out for close to a year now, and I feel like it's the right time to at least get a draft of it out. My concept for DA needs a lot of work, still. And on top of that, I feel that if I don't write Hellion soon, some of my inspiration for that might leak into my other projects. It's already been in danger of doing that with Cloudnigh.

So most likely it looks like I'll be doing Lanternfly next. I'm hoping for a novel around 120k, tops. It'll be an exercise in outlining to make sure I make that goal. Hellion has a pretty expansive world, but like Cloudnigh, it's microcosmic in scope in the first book. The last version of Lanternfly came in at 170k, the first 60k of which was me finding the story. In the end, it wound up at 114k, which would be fine by me if I could do that again. I'm rambling now. Who knows.

So here's what I'm projecting right now--

- Lanternfly (draft 1) -- After outlining, I should start by June at the latest. I'm hoping to get the draft done in 8-10 months.
- Cloudnigh (draft 3) -- I might work on this before, if things with Lanternfly don't go as well. While LF simmers, I might do a fourth draft.
- Lanternfly (draft 2) -- Once I have Cloudnigh done and dusted, I'll most likely get the second draft of LF out.
- Delirium Andromeda (draft 1) -- If I'm still feeling it, then.

If I stick to this, this will take me through the rest of 2012 and into 2013. Summers lately have been slower on the writing front since I only get a couple days a week to do it the way I want.

As always, though, unexpected things happen. Thanks for reading :)