Adventures & Episodes: Where Did Summer Go?

Seriously. Where did the summer go? If you see it, tell it to come back? I'll bake it cookies.I apologize to everyone who thought yesterday's post was going to be about me finishing Turrim 3... that's not what it was about... #BlogTitleFail... it was part of my "Tips and Tricks" series, and I talked about the importance of editing and getting multiple eyes on your manuscript and learning how to take criticism. If you are a writer, I recommend it!!!I've kind of already updated you on all the things that happened in July, so this isn't going to be a normal Adventures and Episodes post. I've already reviewed the only books I read (Ellie and the Prince & Water Princess, Fire Prince).The only movies I watched were I Can Only Imagine, which was very good and it made me cry and I loved it to pieces. GO WATCH IT RIGHT NOW!And Ant Man and the Wasp.... which was AWESOME and HILARIOUS and I can't decide if I like it better than the first one. If you haven't seen the first one, you're missing out! You definitely need to see that one first. But I loved this sequel. I think I like it equally to the first one. Highly recommend. (But see the first one... um... first, or you'll be lost and confused, and that would be sad).We also caught up on NCIS since the latest season came up on Netflix and I LOVES GIBBS FOREVER! Ahem.SPOILER AHEAD!I miss Tony and Ziva though.And now Abbey.*curls up in a ball and cries*SPOILER OVER!We listened to the Focus on the Family Radio Theater drama of Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a family on the drive down to Arkansas and back, and it was as awesome as I remembered it.I wrote 13,050 words in July, which wasn't too shabby considering that I didn't write at all for over a week because vacation/family reunion/REALM MAKERS (you can read my post about that experience HERE).August began and I wrote another 4,480 words in the first two days of August and FINISHED TURRIM THREE!See... TODAY'S post is about me finishing Turrim 3.... hehe(And I think I might even have a potential title candidate... but I'm keeping the lid on that for now... UNLESS you're signed up for my newsletter, which comes out next Monday... Newsletter Subscribers are getting a sneak peek at my title idea, AND an exclusive offer... so make sure you sign up for that before Monday if you haven't already!)Yep. Finally caught up with that deadline that kept whooshing past me (which happened partially as a result of thinking the book was going to be about 80K words long, only to have it end up at 119K... my writing goals seem to enjoy laughing at me... tell me I'm not the only one!?)It's messy, this rough draft of mine. I wrote it in character arcs, which means that the book is currently NOT IN ORDER *cue gasping* which is the first time I've ever written like that, and it's making me die a little inside to leave it like that for now, but I have some clean-up to do before I can weave it all together.However...I really like this book.I think it's the best thing I've ever written... messiness and all.I'm excited to share it with you.Which brings me to... Future Plans.I'm doing something a bit differently with this series. I've hinted at it here and there in other places, and may have even talked about it here on the blog, but several people have asked, so I thought I'd give a few more details. We already had this plan in place, and then some things we learned at Realm Makers confirmed that it was a good idea. So here it is...

The Plan

Currently, I believe that the Turrim Archive is going to be a five-book series. Books 1-3 are now completely drafted. My plan is to continue drafting, completing books 4-5. When the final book is done, I am going to edit them all together in one fell swoop (or several fell swoops, because it's never JUST ONE pass of editing, of course! But "one fell swoop" here means "all together one after another as if it were one enormous book so that everything lines up and there hopefully aren't any inconsistencies from one book to the next" so... "one fell swoop" is a lot easier to say). Once the editing is complete and the cover art is done for all five books, I will be "rapid releasing" this series. What kind of schedule does that mean? I'm not entirely certain yet, but from what I learned at Realm Makers, I think I can confidently say that the books will be released at intervals of anywhere from 6-9 months apart. (Meanwhile, back at the ranch... I will be busily working on another project I've got in mind, and hopefully I can get it finished before/by the time I release Turrim Book 5 or shortly thereafter... at least, that's the dream)!What does that mean for you? Well, initially it means some waiting.*cue whining*I know, I know.It means I'm not going to be publishing anything big for the foreseeable future. I'm not sure how long it will take to get books 4-5 written. Book 3 took five months, and that involved a LOT of time dedicated solely to writing. With our house getting started (So Exciting!!) and school about to begin again, I can't promise I'll be that productive this Fall!! If I COULD write books 4 and 5 in the same sort of time frame, it might mean I could begin editing as early as Autumn 2019, but I'm far too aware of how quickly that kind of schedule can fall apart. Editing takes me a while, too, y'all... so I'm guessing it will be at least a year or two of editing such a massive amount of story... even though these books are all shorter than anything in the Minstrel's Song series, they still aren't exactly SHORT little books, ranging from 112K - 119K so far.So, it'll be a while.I might have some more short stories and perhaps a novella to release in the meantime (another anthology with a short story of mine is coming out in October, for example), but I'm going to try to refrain from spending too much time on these shorter projects so that I can focus on getting Turrim Archive done for you as quickly as possible.Be patient with me, please?