So not much more to say there beyond what the title indicates. The rough draft for book #3 is done, which means that Katie, the girls and I will be opening up a bottle of sparkling cider tomorrow to celebrate the end of that particular project (that’s been our tradition for the last several books).

This book went in directions I didn’t anticipate. At some point that should probably stop surprising me so much. By nature any time I head into something especially tricky (like the conclusion of a series) my instinct is to outline the heck out of it so that I know what I’m getting into and have the difficult parts solved before I get to them.

I find though that for the most part my subconscious spends the bulk of the time in the driver’s seat. I generally have some idea of where I want to go, but in the end the different threads come together in ways I didn’t anticipate and other threads are introduced during the course of the book.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately because tomorrow afternoon/evening I’ll need to start up the next Reflections/Dark Reflections book, and I’m very nervous about it. The last time I headed into a Reflections Universe book with this much anxiety it was Lost–and for the same reason.

I’ve pretty much written to the end of what I can see. I know there are landmarks out there than I want to get to–events that need to happen, people that need introduced, secrets that need revealed, but I’m not quite sure how to get there, or even how some of those things fit together.

So far it’s always worked out to write the book in front of me, and just weave the bigger pieces in as I go, but at times like this I’m particularly worried about painting myself into a corner, so I really want to just put all of the pieces up on a massive outline and make sure that I’m not going to create any problems for myself.

I guess we’ll see which side of my brain wins this go around. Wish me luck 🙂

Dean