When I wrote my first novel CRADLE, from start to finish it took me 12 weeks. According to other writers it seems that’s pretty fast for an 80,000 word novel. Frankly, it didn’t seem like I was rushing and I certainly did not start out to write it that quickly. Thousands of writers do it every year during NANOWRIMO, so I didn’t think it was a big deal.

dying-to-writeI have been working on the sequel to CRADLE since May of this year and so far have completed a little more than a third of my target of 80,000 words. Granted, I have taken a few detours along the way. I started writing a supernatural thriller called THE SECRET WORLD OF MARA DUFFY in March, but put that project on hold when sales of CRADLE took off and readers started clamoring for the next book. Then, while on vacation in San Francisco in August, I got the inspiration for the SOLITARY story and decided to start it as a series of novellas and see how readers react to the story. So far, the reviews and feedback has been terrific and I plan to keep that series going as I continue to work on the WATCHERS trilogy.

My travel schedule for my day job has not allowed me to keep to the fairly regular writing schedule I had last year while working on CRADLE. Instead, I have to steal an hour here or there to write and I find that sometimes I just simply cannot focus enough during those short sessions to produce even a cogent scene. So where CRADLE was an unstructured story written on a fairly regimented schedule, OFFSPRING has been a story with a defined structure and a catch-as-catch-can schedule punctuated by my own tendency to get distracted by new ideas. I find myself at a point of frustration because I am working on OFFSPRING when I really want to be writing other things.

As a voracious reader and fan of several writers with series in progress, I am very sensitive to the needs of my readers and desperately want to get the second book of the WATCHERS series out to keep them happy. But I also fear that I am robbing them of the same complete dedication that I felt while writing CRADLE. I feel like I have a deadline when in reality, there is no such thing for an indie author.

Anyway…I just needed to get that off my chest. Your comments – as always – are welcome. Feel free to tell my to quit whining and get back to work.