so you're probably wondering what's up...

"It has been nearly two years! Where the *insert expletive here* is book two??"
"I'm dying over here!!! When is book two coming out???"
"PLEASEEEEEEEEEE tell me that book two is almost ready!!!"

Repeat as necessary!

This has been my life for the past 18 months or so. Not that I mind. I honestly don't. It means that my story stuck with folks and the desire to read more urges them to reach out to me. I love that!!!

That being said, I promise that book two is about ready to be churned out.

If you've been keeping up with my life, you know that the year after the book came out, I was writing furiously, while my hubby was in college. Then he graduated college. That was a bit of a life change. A good one, and awesome, but still a major life change. Hard to write through those, at least for me. Shortly after that, we moved in with my parents, which at 42 kind of tested us all. While there, my 95 year old grandfather died, with my mother and I holding his hands as he breathed his last.

To be honest, I haven't written all that much since then. I've written on a bunch of different things, but it has been scattered, different stories, scenes from Ishira but not much of it cohesive. Oh, it will all meld together in the end. I have no doubt about that. Then I was just getting back into the swing of things around Christmas when we had another family crisis. My hubby and I had to find a place and move within a month. We managed it, but there was a lot of emotional turmoil over it all, which I'm still dealing with.

He's now working as a teacher, we're settled into our own place once again, and I'm back to trying to get back into my major writing groove so that I can finish Storms of Ishira (book two).

The good thing is that all this time has allowed me to put ideas into the crock-pot of my brain, write scenes here and there, but mainly, I've been working out how the storyline will come together. I think I'm just about done. And I feel like this time was very necessary, so that I COULD work out the series storyline first.

When I first started writing Hearts of Ishira, it was going to be a stand-alone book, just a piece of fluff for the erotica market. But it turned into so much more than that. It grew into its own world, a world that is still unfolding and showing itself to me. I have to take notes when I figure something new out, just so I can keep things straight! LOL

But what that means is that I have to figure out things that will happen in book seven that need to be set up in book two, things from book one that will be carried over, etc. I need to answer some big questions from book two, grow the mysteries that will continue gathering evidence and answers as the series goes, and give glimpses into more family units, more Thorsani, more humans, and establish a deeper connection to their adopted planet than the Thorsani have had until now.

There's a LOT that will be coming up. But I'm kind of glad that I haven't been able to write so much of it yet, since that's made me slow down and analyze WHY I'm having so much trouble finishing book two.

It's because something isn't there yet that needs to be. Once I figure out what that is, things will fall into place and I'll go on a major writing jag for weeks. Then I'll nag my beta readers incessantly to hurry up and give me feedback. Once the initial story is done, it won't take me long to finish the book. I don't send out my first draft. I send out the first version of what I consider to be finished. Not much usually changes from there, to be honest.

So... to answer the questions from the top of this post... I'm still working, but not JUST on book two. I'm also working on aspects of book three (which is already half-way written), book four, and on. I know where the current story arc will end, but because I love Ishira so very much, my goal is to introduce new story arcs as we go, so that none of us have to say good-bye to this world until the day I type my last. Hopefully I'll have enough warning to wrap things up, but if I don't, I've got an 'If I die' file that should let folks know what would have happened, had I been able to write the rest.

Not that I plan on going anywhere, anytime soon. But you know how life can be.

There ya go! The answer to 'are we there yet??' is... Almost!

I'm sincerely hoping for a late spring, early summer release.
Wish me luck!!!! :)

Cosmos...

Just finished watching Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos.

My throat is tight and my imagination is off on adventures all over the place.

It's amazing... I didn't know who Bruno was or what he had done. I know... how is that possible? I'd heard the name, but other than that...

But hearing his thoughts on the universe... I believe like he did. He told the people of his time, "Your God is too small" and they called him a heretic. Perhaps he should have more diplomatically said, "Your concept of your God is too small. He is bigger than you can imagine."
Might not have been burned at the stake. Then again, talking like that today, with all we DO know, can get you looked at funny in some areas. (Ask me how I know!)

I loved Cosmos then, I have a feeling I'm going to love it now.

One thing that I've been contemplating since the beginning of the show, though... Neil said how knowing how very vast the universe is makes us feel small. But honestly, I've never felt that way.

As long as I can remember, I've thought I was more than just a speck of dust on a bigger rock floating about in an endless expanse of space. I don't look at pictures of the cosmos and think about how tiny I am... I think about how big and wonderful it is, how very much I would love to be able to explore it, to visit other planets, see what other life is out there, to communicate with beings who have an entirely different existence from us.









Or what if they have been trying and we've been ignoring or misinterpreting the signs? What if sci-fi writers aren't just people with grand imaginations, but folks who are somehow tapped into that vast cosmic neural net of consciousness, connected to other beings who are attempting to show us their lives, in hopes that we'll show them ours in return. I know there have been books written where that sort of thing has happened. I've read them, I'll write them myself, my own version of it. :) 

Or maybe we're just dreamers, plain and simple, who look at the world around us and wonder 'what if'?' Maybe we are simply not able to be content where we are, with what we have, and we're the ones that feel compelled to push boundaries, imagine different ways of doing things, different ways of living that take us away from what we know.

Maybe that's all a science-fiction writer is... just an amateur theorist of scientific leaning. A dreamer. Visionary? Well, maybe, though we just call it imagination. I think it's when science fiction becomes fact that sci-fi writers are called visionaries. We knew it was possible... we just didn't know how to make it possible, if that makes sense. :) We leave that part up to the real scientists and physicists that have read our books and think, "But that might be possible... why don't we see?"

Okay... I've probably had enough wine! Time to step away from the keyboard! LOL

Or at least away from the internet. I should go write, while I still have stars in my eyes. ;)