One Piece at a Time

I’m almost finished writing the third book in my time travel series that began with Resonance and Dissonance. This will be the last book in that series for now, at least. I’ve got a another book idea I’ll be outlining soon.

While working on this book, which I think I’ll call Malignance, I have had to work around several big time-consuming projects from my day job. Here I am, working on the ending of this book, and seeing a few changes that need to be made for the story to work the best. It’s like anything else in life. If I break it down into manageable chunks, it is so much easier to address it and fix it. Trying to tackle all of it at once would be daunting. I need small pieces I can work through.

This book is a time travel book, and even though the story is linear, some things happen simultaneously. That’s where I have needed to break it into bite size chunks to manage them. I think I’ve done a decent job, but I still have to clean up the book and polish it before I publish it.

I have to approach my writing in much the same way a protagonist in the story would approach their problem. At the beginning of the book the protagonist isn’t able to see the end. The have to experiment. My outlining process is similar to that. I outline the events then chapters then scenes. Sometimes, a scene takes up a whole chapter. As I write the first draft, I make changes to my outline as needed, that’s part of my experimentation. I also break the book down and write a scene or two, or maybe even a chapter or two each day. those are manageable chunks. Later on, after the ending is on paper, I make the adjustments that are needed to the beginning.

One piece at a time is how I tackle all kinds of tasks. It’s how I manage to write at my pace, right now. Writing is my escape, or at least, my break from the stresses of life.

Beyond my books Resonance and Dissonance, check out my other books.

My fantasy, A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, was a fun book to write. It is set in a world with limited technology, but where sacrifice is a necessary element to magical power. The greater the pain and suffering, the greater the magical power generated. The few mages in power use voluntary sacrifice of the citizens to generate power they use to protect and defend the empire. But their rule may be coming to a close.

If you’re looking for a science fiction story, try my book The Promise of Dust, which takes place in a cloud city floating in the atmosphere of Venus. Or Progenitor’s Legacy: Deceit, which takes place many years in the future on a tidally locked world that orbits a red dwarf and has been reached by humanity in their search for the alien progenitors who seeded the galaxy with nano machines.

If a young adult science fiction is more to your liking, check out my series This New Earth, that starts with Demons of a Dead World and Secrets of a Dead World.

If you are looking for a young adult fantasy, check out my book The Threads Unbound.