Good News / Bad News

So, first, the good news.

Crown of Exiles: Battlehymn is done. Audio and text versions are both available at exiles.madpoetfiles.com. 14 episodes, about 60,000 words of giant robots, princesses in disguise, forbidden love, and the power of rock ‘n roll. And some time around the middle of next year, I should have book two: Crown of Exiles: Lamentations ready to go. That’s the good news.

The bad news.

I’ve been working on this Untitled Ghost Bear Project for the last few weeks. It’s a rewrite of my NaNoWriMo project from 2010. I’m about 29,500 words in to this rewrite. And it’s just not going anywhere. I haven’t had a clear destination – well, I have, but no idea of what the middle of the book was going to be. I’m growing increasingly uninterested in the characters, and I realize that the protagonist is too much of a cipher to be compelling.

So… I’m going to have to toss it and start over. This is going to come as a disappointment to some people (who have said they just want to read the dang thing already), but this project is… special. It has to be right. And the way it’s been written so far, it’s not.

It’s not a total loss. I do have a clear ending I want to get to for the first book. I’ve got a theme. I’ve got a magic system. And I have a set of blank note cards, a pen, and some time. So… here’s what’s about to happen.

I’m going to save everything I’ve written so far. I’m going to stick it in a folder in my Scrivener project so it’s all saved. I’m going to grab these note cards, and I’m going to start putting this bad boy together right, so that when it’s done, it totally kicks butt. Battlehymn was mostly playing around. This project is one that I feel a responsibility to get right. And it’s not something I’m going to be able to do without a good outline. It’s not something I’m going to be able to do without a more interesting protagonist. It’s not something I’m going to be able to do without digging a little deeper and doing the hard work – putting up the scaffold, collecting the materials, and then moving forward.

Two weeks. In two weeks, I’ll be back at 25,000 words. Believe it.