So I’m back to work writing, and it feels pretty good.  While I enjoy writing this blog and making fun of the regressive thinking of conservatives, to me it’s not real writing.  I’m a novelist at heart.  My brain thinks in terms of 60,000-75,000 words, and unless I’m focusing on a project that puts me in that range, I feel like I’m just playing around.  Sure, the blog is a lot of fun, and I plan to keep writing it for as long as I can because as long as superstition and fear guide some people’s motives I feel it’s important for someone to mock them, but my books are the only things writing-related that truly satisfy me.

In related news, yesterday I appeared on Missa’s Urban Home with Missa Dixon for an interview about The Brotherhood of Dwarves.  I love doing interviews and wish I got to do more.  It’s a lot of fun to discuss topics that are dear to me, and once the interview gets going, I rarely feel like talking to anyone other than the interviewer, so I don’t feel much in the way of nerves.  When the interviewer is on their game and asking good questions, I feel like I can cut loose and speak my mind without censorship.  That’s a pretty cool feeling.

So if you haven’t listened to it yet, I hope you’ll check out the interview and let me know what you think.

www.thirdaxe.com

I started back on book three last night after another long stretch of inactivity.  This manuscript has been the most frustrating thing I’ve ever worked on.  To put it in perspective, when I first started it, I was still married.  I got about a chapter and a half in and went through my divorce.  The book had to go on the back burner because I was too screwed up emotionally to focus on writing.  A year and a half passed and I finally felt comfortable enough in my own skin to start back, and the writing flowed smoothly and easily.  I had everything rolling in the right direction and felt great about the progress I was making.

Then, I started teaching dual enrollment.  After a couple of weeks of teaching those kids, all of my momentum was gone.  Each day, I wasted most of energy playing babysitter to kids who had no business taking a college course.  Not all of them were that bad.  If I could’ve boiled the class down to the half who were serious and focused, it might not have been so bad, but the other half lacked the attention span or, in some cases, the work ethic, to handle college level work.  In short, once again this manuscript got put on the back burner.

Now, I’m back at it for round three.  This time, I will finish the last four and a half chapters or die trying.

I feel like the book is pretty good.  It needs polishing and editing, but the story is pretty intense.  Also, some of the seemingly minor plot points from book one come back into the foreground and take on more meaning.  Also, I get to explore the back stories of two of my favorite characters, Leinjar and Krondious, so the book has a lot of great things going on.  Overall, I think it’s an excellent midway point for the series and really sets up book four nicely.  Now, it’s time to finish it.

www.thirdaxe.com