Update on "The Red Apprentice"

First and foremost, I swear... I love writing. It's been a rough year from creating a website, creating social media posts, and querying. It is rough work, pimping your book out to agents. The years before that were spent editing and re-editing, over and over. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it sometimes, especially working with the awesome people I was fortunate to find. However, just like writing query letters, editing and querying isn't "writing," and writing is something I truly missed!

The more I add to Red Apprentice, the more I remember how much I love writing! I thought that I'd be hampered by the limitations set by the known future. I sincerely worried that knowing where I was going without the ability to go with the flow and "let the character lead the story" (aka "pants-ing") would make writing this book less fun. Well I'm happy to say that I was VERY wrong.

My worry was baseless. You see, LaTao's personality fits perfectly with the decisions that I originally thought she'd make, so when the situations come, so far, her actions and reactions have fit perfectly into place. I guess it wasn't totally baseless. LaTao's such a free spirit and so hard to limit that it does make sense to expect her to be a little chaotic. But you all get it my now. The "TLDR" version is that I'm having fun writing this book!

Update time:

Blog:

Next week I'll be writing, sure, but I won't be blogging over the holiday. Expect the next one on December 3rd. If you have a topic or a question for me, please post it in the comments!

Red Apprentice:

First, I potted the main points of the story. Later, I brainstormed, added, and modified things as needed. Once done, I looked at each individual section and estimated how many words each would be, treating every 350 words as one page. With these stats in mind, I tallied my preliminary guesstimate of the total word count. After writing a few chapters, I estimate that this book will be between 70k and 85k, perfectly in the expected range for YA fantasy fiction.

Query:

I expect to finish the first draft of "Red Apprentice" in December and begin the new year querying once again. Please do me a favor and keep rooting for me! Querying is draining and my sanity was teetering before starting up this current book.

Have an awesome holiday and I'll meet you again next month! Please comment with query suggestions for December! Peace!