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!!!! :)