December 2015 Update: NaNo and Book 6

Time for a look at where I've been and where I'm going. For NaNoWriMo in November, I wrote nearly 54,000 words of Heir of Tanaris (the book formerly knows as The Healing Tree; I love it when I finally think of a decent title!). It still isn't finished; I'm guessing the first draft is going to end up around 80,000 words, by far the longest novel I've written in a while. The characters and plot continue to grow and change on me; the synopsis I've posted is already obsolete. I like to plan and outline my books and develop my characters ahead of time, but once I'm immersed in the story and my subconscious takes over, things can go in very different directions. I'm plugging along with finished the draft at a thousand words a day (usually more; that's my minimum). I'm hoping to finish it by the end of December, but with Christmas bearing down quickly, that might not happen.

I'm also working on major revisions to For the Wildings, the 6th and final book of Daughter of the Wildings. It's much longer than the other books in the series and between work on Heir and Christmas stuff, the revision isn't going real fast, but I am making daily progress on it. Still no good idea of when it'll be released.

And those two things are taking pretty much all of my brain power these days. I'm still reading a lot with the little that's left, so I'll do another reading roundup soon.

The plan for 2016: continue writing 1000 words a day on novels, short stories, writing exercises that may or may not turn into stories, whatever. I went a long time without writing anything new, and got rusty on it. Also, after the release of For the Wildings in the first part of the year, the next books on the list for release will be The Source-Fixer (still looking for a decent title for that one) and Heir of Tanaris, and also the Tales from Azara collection. I'll probably post a few of those here for free. Beyond that, my very first novel ever and its sequel are waiting for evaluation and revision, and I'm working out ideas for a follow-up series to Daughter of the Wildings and also for a sequel to Urdaisunia.

That should keep me out of trouble for a while.