Hello there,
It’s been a little while hasn’t it? I seem to have neglected this site a little in favour of writing which, though not conducive to building an audience and interacting with readers, is certainly necessary when it comes to writing a book.
Book 3 has been a difficult mountain for me to climb. I started with the best intentions, planning it out to where I usually get a book to before I start writing and diving in with gusto, but I struggled to really hit the ground running with it, struggled to find my pace.
With the world re-opening again (albeit slowly) I have had things to do over the past month and a half, shifts to work and a life I had left behind in the lockdowns to tend to. It means that as the days went by, my deadlines got harder and harder to meet. When I sat down to write, I managed to hit my word counts most of the time and was inching towards that goal but I could feel myself on the edge of a burnout. I needed a little more time.
Not one, but two extensions later, the book is finished and has been to my editor (twice) and is hopefully in a pretty good state. I love the beginning, I love the ending, the middle was what I was most worried about but my editor has assured me that she has enjoyed it, so there we are. The story is (I think) quite an exciting one. The plot feels interesting and fresh, and there are parts of this book that I have been looking forward to writing for a couple of books now. (Some big revelations to come, but I will say no more for fear of spoiling anything!) It’s an exciting one for sure and you will be seeing it very VERY soon.
I am writing this post because, though I don’t get a huge amount of readers on this blog, I feel like it’s important to be honest about both the successes and the failures or setbacks that come with writing. Book one and two came a little easier than book 3. I certainly had them finished way ahead of my deadline, while this one was a little tougher to wrangle. But now that it’s done I am pleased that I forced myself to sit down and do the writing even when I was feeling a little bit exhausted.
With only the proofread left to do, I now need to start thinking about book 4. The idea has been in my head for this one for a little while (the plot of it was originally meant to be book 3, which is perhaps why book 3 was so hard to wrangle, in hindsight!) and I once again have quite a few scenes in this book that I am absolutely itching to write.
Hopefully we can do this one in a much more timely manner and, all being well, you will be enjoying it some time before the end of the summer. But we’ve got book 3 to contest with first. More details on that to come shortly…
Until then!
GS
GS Rhodes 