A New Set of Challenges
fter I self published my first novel I decided to create a post discussing some of the lessons I learned along the way, and as I imagined the lessons keep coming. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in writing and producing the sequel is that all books are not created equal. 
When I started writing Goddess of Carnage after Bridge of Memories came out in February, I was under the impression that producing book two would be easier because I knew a lot more than I did with book one. I had been through the experience once already, and for the most part I was pretty sure I had gotten all the bugs out of the process. I had a timeline all set out in my mind of how this was going to work, and within the course of several months that entire timeline that encompassed the better part of 2012, was derailed by several events which I was unable to control, thus forcing me to create an entirely new timeline for the next year, year and a half. But here’s the thing about timelines when it comes to writing… each book presents with it, it’s own set of unforeseen new challenges that you may not have faced with the previous book, and which make it impossible to predict what will await the next one. Goddess of Carnage is 30k words longer than Bridge of Memories which means that editing such a novel took longer than I had expected because much of my basis for how long things like editing should have taken was based on a book on a much smaller scale. In addition, Goddess of Carnage has gone through far more rigorous editing than Bridge of Memories before it, and in so doing has presented the challenge of making sure that I am able to do what needs to be done while still following the latest timeline I set out for myself with the announcement of Goddess of Carnage’s publication date. Having been through the process of creating the interior file for book one already I was pretty sure that this would be another area I would not have any difficulty in. However changing the size of the novel caused me a bit of trouble, and again the length was a whole new challenge that I was forced to face.
All of this is information that I now have to remember regarding what would be my planned timeline for book 3, because like Goddess of Carnage, book 3 is going to be longer. In fact, book 3 will be the longest book I’ve written to date and more importantly with any luck, almost 70k words longer than Bridge of Memories. Which means a potentially longer edit time and by extension more time between when how long I want this to take me and how long it will actually take. I can’t predict what fresh hell book 3 will create for me, but hopefully the lessons I’ve learned during the process of my first two books will be carried through into the final book in the Secrets of Witches Trilogy.
