11PM. Sunday, July 11th. I typed my two favorite words and put the first draft of a new Seraph novel to bed. 40 chapters. Just shy of 500 pages of manuscript. I am happy with the results.
It took a little longer than I anticipated. When I outlined the book in 2021, I truly believed I could write it in less than a year. Life intervenes sometimes. I went through a bit of a life crisis, uprooted my Clark Kent life and initiated a move cross-country. Somehow, in the move, I lost a set of my notes on the current section I’d been working on, which really threw me for a loop. It took me over a year to find my rhythm again while settling into a new home and a new job (and after being essentially homeless for the first five months, which is a story all on its own).
How to recover? I read what I’d written so far. I went back to my original outline. And, I spent some time listening to my characters — especially to Ray. Turns out he had some things to tell me, things about his past life and his imperfect nature that I hadn’t realized yet. It lit a fire. I made a commitment to write bit by bit every day. I wrote the last 25% of the book in the span of about two months. (I note, Seraph took an accumulated 25 years to get to print. My second book — still in a drawer — took about 10 for a beta draft. This one took 5 years. At this rate, in a few years I should be cranking out a new book every six weeks! 🤣)
And here it is. The biggest thing I’ve written, to date, and with a different title than the one I started with. It’s in my wife’s hands now — my alpha reader, number one fan, and talented book designer. From there? Rewrites rewrites rewrites. I won’t make a prediction about a release date yet. But in the grand scheme of geologic time I’ll just say, SOON.
I can’t wait for you all to read it.