Two down, one to go. Well, sort of.

A few moments before writing this post, I typed out the final scene of the second book in The Reinhold Chronicles trilogy. This book has been a crazy-incredible experience in so many ways, not least of all in the fact that it took me only three months to get this first draft on paper (err…laptop)! It’s also the most ambitious story I’ve written, boasting the largest cast of characters and the longest word count of any of my works thus far. (The final count is around 94,000 words.)

It’s a tad unusual to be so far ahead of my readers. I’m already two-thirds finished with writing the trilogy, but the first book doesn’t come out until next autumn! Just a few reasons for my madness:

1. I couldn’t stop my momentum. Or rather, I had to use my momentum. Back in August when I started writing Book 2, I was still flaming with excitement (pun intended) from finishing the first book, The Fiery Arrow. Especially since the first chapter of Book 2 relates directly to events in Book 1, I found myself taking advantage of my passionate state of mind.
2. The story was ready to be written. Sure, I hadn’t planned out every scene, or even every chapter—far from it! However, I’d gotten to a point with the story where it would only develop if I started to let my ideas drip onto the paper. Not until I began (and continued) writing the book did I get a true feel for the character arcs, themes, and subplots.
3. I’m striving for consistency. Now that I’ve finished writing Book 2, I get to revisit The Fiery Arrow for another round of editing. The splendiferous thing is that I can also start checking for series consistency: does Book 1 contradict Book 2, or vice versa, and which one needs to be altered? If I had waited until publishing The Fiery Arrow to continue writing, I’d probably end up with more story inconsistencies.

So there you go. Book 2 is done—and, by the way, it isn’t entitled Book 2, though you might think so from this post. It has a title, and it’s a very good title, I think. But I can’t reveal the title of the second book before the first one is out, can I? <maniacal chuckle>

This story has been quite the humdinger of an adventure to write. I’ve struggled and second-guessed myself just about all the way through (even though I usually laughed at myself for it later). Thankfully the last few chapters fell into place almost perfectly—a rare example of when something ends up better in print than it did in your head! For that I’m thankful, and I owe it mostly to plenty of prayer, my encouraging friends of family, and copious amounts of tea and music (lately, the Outlander soundtrack).

Soli Deo gloria.