New Year, New Stories

Once upon a time...
It was a dark and stormy night....
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
Call me Izzy...

Ah, the opening line.

I spent so many hours agonizing over perfecting my opening line for Telos.  I have so many versions saved in one of the various 'temorary' files for that book.  It's hard to believe I began writing Telos over two years ago--as a project to occupy my time during Lent (we'd given up television watching) and to give my kids a story while they waited for the next installment of the series we were reading (Justin Somper's VAMPIRATES, which we've just recently begun to reread).

I'm happy to announce that thirteen minutes into the new year (and thirteen minutes later than my goal had been), I finished the fifth complete rewrite of Telos: book one of The Children of Chaos.

Now, it's time to start something new.  These new projects (for indeed, there are more than one brewing in my head) will encourage me to take a step away from the world of Chaos and to leap into new worlds full of chaos.  I look forward to the days of research as I examine and explore those worlds which I have yet to create.  I look forward to getting to know all the new characters I will meet there and their problems.  I look forward to the headaches of figuring out why something just isn't working and the countless hours of revision work ahead of me.  And, I look forward to handing the first rough draft to my husband/daughter/sister/mother-in-law and having them tell me what they did/didn't like about it.

But, I'm not leaving the world of Chaos completely.  I still have work to do...query revision, rewriting the snyopsis, finding an agent to sell Lily's story.  And then there are the sequel and finale in the trilogy which need rewriting and the side-stories and companion novels itching to be told.  But, I'm putting Chaos's full stories aside for now as I focus on renewing my passion for writing.  The few short stories I wrote while working on Telos really helped revitalize my love for telling stories and I'm hoping at least one new novel will do the same.

I'm excited!  It's a new year full of new stories to tell, and I look forward to sharing those stories with you and the rest of the world someday soon.