A Writer's Week #39: Moving Right Along

Well hello there everyone. I hope you're all well as we find ourselves squarely in the fall season. For many of us, temperatures and leaves are falling, and some are even seeing (shudder) snow! For me, even though the seasons are changing, one thing seems to remain constant--I'm still writing The Deliverers 2: Order of the Crystal Lion.

Chazum Warrior Sketch

I was hoping the first draft would be finished by now, but the ending is unfolding a little differently that what I had originally envisioned, with a couple little unexpected plot twists and turns. I believe this is good, but won't be sure until I go back and read it all after I've finished the first draft. The immediate result is that it's taken me a little longer to finish than I thought. The good thing is that I'm not stuck, and everything is moving right along.

That really seems to be this week's writing theme. Everything in Deliverers Land is moving forward, which is good. I managed to write 2,600 words this week. This brings the total word count up to 52,800 words, 57 chapters and 232 pages. So, the book is going to be drawing to a close within a couple of weeks. I know I keep saying that, but eventually it will happen, right?

Anyway, Daniel Vogel, the young artist who did the map and cover for The Deliverers: Sharky and the Jewel recently sent me a conceptual sketch of a Chazum warrior from the new book. It looks pretty good. These guys are great. They're people who have had lion genes spliced into their DNA--against their will. This makes them well suited to be fighters. The rest of their society, called the Vynistri, looks down on them as less than human. Of course they're not, and that forms part of the problem that Eric and company are sent to address.

On another front, the audio book version of The Deliverers: Sharky and the Jewel is also moving right along. This week, voice actor Jimm Singer uploaded the first finished 18 minutes of the audio book on to ACX. It really sounds fantastic. This is the first step on the road to completing the audio book.

The next milestone is the entire book. The due date for that is mid-November. In between now and then, Jimm and I will be communicating back and forth as he sends me rough chapters to get my feedback. I'm really excited to hear his interpretation of the characters. I've heard all four of The Deliverers from his audition, and you're really going to love them. In the coming month I'll be bringing you a couple snippets to listen to. Toward the end of this month I'll be doing a first for this blog--a podcast interview with Jimm Singer.

Now in honor of the fact that I'm moving forward with these projects, here's a fun song from the original Muppet Movie entitled (no surprise) Moving Right Along.