Alright, so.

It’s been a little while since I last posted here. Life’s been crazy lately: between work and a whole bunch of stuff going on in my personal life, I’ve barely had enough energy to devote to regular work on my novels, let alone keeping this blog going. Yeah, it’s only a short post every Friday – or so it was before these last few weeks messed everything up – but getting back into the swing of things has been tough. Working a decently demanding physical job, having to wake up early every morning for that job (I’m not a morning person and never will be)…readjusting to that has been tougher than I anticipated. In a few weeks, I’m sure, I’ll be back in the swing of things: for now, though, work has taken its toll on my productivity.

And it hasn’t just been work. School has taken up a decent amount of my time, too, along with a few things in my personal life that’ve come up. As I feared coming into the summer, scrounging up the energy to go to work and work on my thesis and work on my novels has been tough at times. And that’s not even considering the errands I have to run, the runs and workouts I still try to keep up with, the impending search for new living space (which itself has had some unexpected wrinkles that’ve made my life even busier)…it’s all just been crazy.

So where does that leave the writing?

Well, work on Usi Book 1 has been sporadic, to say the least. There’ll be days when I can pretty much sit down and write like I normally do: maybe a few stops and starts here and there, but fairly free-flowing overall. However, there are other days where my mind feels like a swamp; where I can barely put two sentences together before I throw my hands up in the air and give up for the day.

Part of this, I suspect, just has to do with the nature of what I’m working on. Chronicles of Usi might be the most ambitious thing I’ve ever tried to write: it is, after all, a secondary world fantasy with a huge amount of detail to keep track of. Not only that, but I’ve already had to do a bunch of research just to make sure I’m getting the technology consistent. I’ve made the conscious choice to make this world a bit more technologically advanced than many fantasies are: many secondary world fantasies, as you’re no doubt aware, have a more or less medieval setting, with knights, squires, lords and ladies, all that fun stuff. Xerinia, though (the setting for Chronicles of Usi) will be more technologically advanced: I’m thinking early- to mid-Industrial Era, just before the invention of the steam engine. So there’s no steam engine in Xerinia yet – and thus no steam trains, no steam-powered barges, nothing like that – but there are a bunch of technological advancements that’ve been made in Xerinia that a fantasy world like Middle Earth or Westeros hasn’t seen yet. And that, in turn, has meant researching a whole bunch of little details as I write them, making sure I actually get the tech right. Like looking up when doorknobs were invented (they’re a more recent invention than I realized!), or double checking when the stirrup was invented (when you got stirrups depends on what part of the world you’re in; however, by the late 1700s/early 1800s, stirrups were pretty much ubiquitous).

And that’s not to mention the intricacies of the political system, or how the magic system works into all this. Of course, neither of those will play a huge role early in the book: Zuza’s quest, at least to start out with, will be fairly straightforward, and her story will happen in just a fraction of the vast, divided Empire of Xerinia. But I have to make sure to at least get the big details right, and keep them consistent, or the narrative will unravel as this series goes on.

We’ll see how it goes, though. Hopefully as I get used to working a physical job again (not to mention waking up early most mornings for work) I’ll have more energy to put into my writing. And once I really get into the thick of the plot, hopefully I can get my first draft out faster. I think I’ve still got an OK chance at finishing this thing by the end of June, although I’m not quite as confident as I was at the end of last month. Even if work on Usi carries on through July, though, I guess that’s not the end of the world. My 4 novels in a year goal is a fairly ambitious one: if I fall short and “only” write 3, I’ll still break my record for books written in a year.

Apart from Usi, there isn’t much to report. Editing on The Ravage continues, slow but steady. I might be able to finish the edit this week: once I do, it’ll be time for some beta readers to take a look at it and tell me what they think. And finishing my latest Ravage edit will allow me time to finally get some work done on that Kosan rewrite…and then, after that, there’ll be the Keepers of Eternity rewrite…and finishing up the Dante’s Inferno draft…and oh yes, finally finishing the first Procurers book, too, which I still need to get back to at some point. And of course there’s all the book ideas I haven’t started yet but want to at some point, some of which have been bouncing around in my head for years.

Never a dull moment. Anyway, that’ll be it for tonight. I’m hoping this coming week will be a return to some sense of normalcy. But, as with all things in life, we’ll see. Until next time, have fun, stay safe and keep reading.