After today, I won’t have to call my sequel novel Path of Relics “2” anymore!
But first, how is the revision going?
Here’s the part that’s kept me from posting for a while: It’s delayed.
I’ll get into the details below, but to do the story justice, the new release date is March of next year.
For those of you patiently waiting for the sequel, I’m truly sorry. A combination of factors led to this delay, and while I don’t want to make excuses, I’ve realized it’s important to pinpoint the problems, so I don’t repeat them.
First a couple of things out of my control…
I didn’t know if I’d still have a job the beginning of this year. My day job lost several of its major accounts, and the company nearly collapsed. Needless to say, my scheduled changed drastically, just doing what was necessary to keep things going and stay employed.
I also began online classes for Digital Marketing to help drum up more business for the owner of the company. But also, as backup for an exit.
And while these certainly shook my writing schedule, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit the biggest time-sink, which was a bout of writer’s block.
This sequel required a lot of planning. If you’ve read the first Path of Relics, you’ll know there’s many possibilities for where the story goes next. I always had my ideas what that would be, even before writing the first novel.
But taking the specifics of the PoR 1 ending—where we left the characters, what we’d discovered about the lore of the game world, the culminating events—it was a lot to extrapolate out. And that was fun! But because there were so many possibilities, it left a lot of room for self-doubt, which slowed the revision and required lots of rewriting.
Moving Forward
I’ve got my momentum back, and the revision is humming along at a great pace now. Plus, I’ll use much of the world building done this past year in all the remaining novels.
I’m also reading a great book on writing faster. It’s called The Write Fast System, by J. Danforth.
If you’re a writer, I highly recommend it. You can get a copy here.
Lessons Learned to Prevent Future Delays
- Adjust my planning process. Currently, it’s detailed in a lot of good ways, but chaotic. And I can improve plotting structural elements to produce a more solid first draft, so I’m not flailing in the revision.
- Give the revision a deadline. It’s strange how we find a process that works, then promptly forget it. I know the value of a public deadline, yet while I set one for the first draft, I didn’t for the revision. Tisk tisk…
- Push through the revision. Another forgotten lesson. Sometimes when I’m struggling with a story problem, I just have to try things until I find what works. Many of these attempts will get tossed, but bit by bit, I get closer to a chapter that feels right. Then the polish can come later.
I’m really loving the direction of the sequel, and I can’t wait for you to read it!
Speaking of which, about that title.
The full title of the next novel will be…
Path of Relics: Dark Throne
It’s going to be quite a journey, both across the lands of Path of Relics and for our characters.
Stay up to date on the story’s progress by joining my newsletter here. You’ll also get my free short story anthology, Flash Horizons.
