Four years ago, in 2020, I first posted about my four-book YA fantasy series. My last update was in 2021, and a lot has happened since then. I finished revisions of book one, KJ, in November of 2022, at a whopping 178,000 words, and have since been sharing it with beta readers and collecting feedback while I work on book two.

About book two (code name N):

Pirates of the Caribbean meets Ben Hur, with a dash of Pride and Prejudice.

No, this is not my first time in the story. In 2016, in the middle of college, I started a draft but got no farther than the first few chapters. Way back when I was a kid and had finished the VERY early (and cringey) version of KJ, I might have started book two as well. But I have no document proof of that. Maybe I imagined it.

The present reality:

I started this main draft of N just over a year ago, on February 3 of 2023. Now I’m over 87,000 words into the story, over halfway. (My target word count is 140,000 or under.) While it may be the first draft, the story is already way more solid than most of KJ’s million drafts were, and I expect to have much less fixing to do once I finish the draft (fixes to the actual story, that is–chopping for the sake of word count doesn’t apply).

My primary inspo soundtracks are

• Pirates of the Caribbean (of course)
• Gladiator
• Assassin’s Creed, especially IV: Black Flags
• The Dark Knight trilogy
• and some of Star Wars III.

Most of these soundtracks are deeper and more somber than my KJ playlist, suiting the slightly darker tone and content of this book.

And then there’s SailNorth, whose single “Tale of the Shadow” is pretty much N’s story–or what his story could be–in the form of a sea shanty.

I’ve been pleased by how (relatively) easy it is to write a story that had 15 years to come together before I actually sat down to write it. Those years of writing book one were also years of brainstorming book two (and book three and book four), so while KJ developed a lot AS I wrote it, N developed largely BEFORE I started it. Of course, there are developments and changes as I write N too, but not to the same extent as with KJ.

I’ve been surprised by how hard the emotions have been, from the very beginning. The story hits the ground running, and as I told a friend at the time, the rubber meets the road even before the rubber meets the road. And it hasn’t stopped since. Every single scene has involved so much tension, so much conflict, and so many emotions–often the hard kind of emotions–that sometimes have been genuinely difficult for me to write.

My poor characters = my poor heart. (Though you know what they say: no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader . . .)

I’ve also been surprised by the spiritual themes. While N is not an allegory, there are several representations of spiritual ideas that have wormed their way into the story. I’m happy to let them stay and appreciate the extra depth they provide.

What has been most surprising, perhaps, is the characters themselves. They have a mind of their own, and while general ideas have stayed on course with the plot I’ve had for years, it has astonished me how many times these characters hijack a scene and do whatever they want–often the exact opposite of what I intended. The little buggers.

But the story is better because of it, and it’s part of the fun of writing: sometimes you truly never know what’s going to happen.

Here are my goals for the KJ series for the rest of this year:

• Finish this draft of N by the end of May. This gives me about three months (13 weeks, including this week) to write just under half a book, on top of work and other writing projects and the rest of life. So this is a soft deadline: if I have to bump it to the end of summer, I’m okay with that. But it gives me something to aim for, and it also serves as a sort of test for how quickly I can write a book. (Anything less than 15 years is doing good. :D)
• Outline book three by the end of the year. Very doable. (My brain wants to play with book three NOW, but I have to remind myself to stay focused with book two while I’m in it. I’ll be able to play with book three soon. The ideas are calling . . .)
• Submit book one to an agent or publisher by the end of the year. Yikes! While I’ve had my eye on a couple publishers over the past few years, I’m not sure exactly where I’ll land, whether with a publisher or with an agent, and what kinds of changes I’ll have to make with KJ as a result. (Looking at you, word count . . .) I’m praying and, as the year progresses, will begin putting out more feelers.

For non-book goals, I plan to

• post a book review once a month here on the blog,
• stay regular with my monthly updates to my allies, and
• continue building community and support for this writing journey and these books.

Two months into the year, and so far so good!

Thank you for joining me on this writing journey! I wish I could tell you so much more about N and all the ways it has made me laugh, cry, swoon, scream, groan, and nearly keel over with [insert emotion] already, but . . . I’ll just wait until you can read it for yourself. May that day come quickly. 🙂