After having a month of my life hijacked by an arduous task that had to be done to help the overall quality of the Barbarians of the Storm book series, I have been back to writing Book III (technically the fourth).
My family went out of town for Thanksgiving. I was invited but it was all sort of last minute, I didn’t feel like traveling and ultimately, saw it as a great opportunity to get some serious mileage in on the still untitled Book III. For the record, a few of us had a mini Thanksgiving last night to make up for not being together a few days earlier.
I didn’t get as much headway on the book as I had hoped over the weekend, as I was knee deep into what is probably the toughest chapter. However, as of this morning, I was able to get to the end of it, as far as the first draft is concerned. It’s not perfect and needs some fine tuning and as I continue to write the rest of the book, there will most assuredly be a few details I’ll need to go back and add to it. The hardest part is done, though, and I hope it is smooth sailing from here on out.
That being said, I’m twenty pages and two chapters deep into the book. Getting started and finding the right flow is always the toughest task for me. Generally, I know where everything else needs to go now. I’ve known how I’ve wanted to finish this book since I was working on Book II aka Atomic Beasts and Where to Kill Them.
The most challenging chapters for me are the ones early on where you have to answer some questions from previous books while laying down the groundwork for what needs to come. When I write these sort of chapters, new ideas go off like fireworks and I can sometimes become overwhelmed by them and have to stay focused on what is most important in the now and the near future.
There are two really important things I need to focus on in this book considering that Fenrik, the greatest hero thus far, is in a situation that will force others to step up and discover what their destinies are.
In some ways, this book will have some dark moments. It might be closer in tone to my horror anthology Eyes in All Shadows & Other Stories, but I feel like the readers who have made it thus far, need to see who Dan truly is beyond just hints of his heroic nature. Additionally, Erzulyn is evolving into something far beyond just being a secondary villain, as she started out in Dan the Destructor. I think those who have followed along, thus far, are probably well aware of Erzulyn’s importance.
This is going to be a big book in scope compared to the previous two. It will be a turning point for all the key players building off of what they went through in Atomic Beasts.
I don’t want to spoil any of the details, though. I’ll only say that there are much bigger things at play than what the previous books have shown. A lot of that is coming out in this one.
I’m pretty f’n excited about it.