I am happy to say that my entire time in quarantine and working from home hasn’t gone to waste. Truthfully, the first few weeks were difficult (as I mentioned in earlier posts), but after that I was able to spare some of my mental energy for writing and plotting.

Speaking of plotting, I want to share a personal achievement. While working on The Lost Colony first draft, I have been simultaneously plotting, and a few weeks ago I finished—all 152 scenes! This plotting project has been quite the major undertaking, from buying and gluing the foam trifolds, painstakingly drawing and redrawing lines and boxes, to writing out all 152 scenes on individual 3×5 cards. Now, I know that I will be even more proud when the book is finished, but I couldn’t help but feel satisfaction seeing my plotting board completely filled in. For those who haven’t read my earlier posts, I am using the Save the Cat! plotting method from Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. Being a plotter for the majority of my projects, having cards to look at has been extremely helpful with getting back on track.

More good news about The Lost Colony; I just finished writing the first fourth of the novel. Now, I already know that there will be major changes and additions to the beginning, but I am going to leave that for the second draft. My main goal is to finish the project, establishing the “camera path,” how characters act and move from one scene to the next. Once that’s finished, I can start filling out the story with much needed details and foreshadowing.

In other news, the final edits for “Night Watch” have been sent in. The publisher is doing a final pass before the anthology launches in July (as far as I’ve been told). I know for sure that it will be available online, and I suspect that a print version will also be an option. I will pass on more details as they come.

Finally, I think it’s time that I start putting up more content on this website. Posting once a month is not the worst I have seen on some sites, but I want to have a wider variety of material that visitors can read. Since I am not a well-established author, I may be limited in what I can do, but if anyone has any suggestions or things they would like to see me post, send me a message.

Thank you for stopping by and as always, stay safe and healthy!