Hey, I remembered two months in a row! That’s quite a feat when you spend pretty much all of your time writing…

Avalanche is almost done, at least in its initial draft. I originally had a goal of about 130,000 words, but I realized that the series of events I was planning on wasn’t the best use of the scope of the book. I adjusted the timeline down a bit, pushing some later content back to Frostbite and trimming my target word count to about 115,000 words, or a little bit longer than my average book (which hits about 110,000 words).

As I’ve written Avalanche, I’ve covered a huge amount of time in the timeline, I’ve worked to weave threads together from four other books, (the whole Warrior’s Trilogy and Snowfall), and I’ve crafted Amethyst as a character that will stand out in my world of Erde. Right now, I’m on chapter 19 out of a planned 20, and I can see the end.

I’ve got a plan for finishing off this novel that I think is the best thing for the story, and it’s a month ahead of schedule. I’m pretty sure I can write the final scene here before everyone in the house wakes up. This will give me time to reread the whole book and make some adjustments, smooth things out, and let my beta readers get their hands on a slightly more polished work than usual. This will help a lot in letting them focus more on the story than the technical aspects of my writing.

The whole novel has been trimmed down to slightly shorter than usual, at right around 105,500 words. Not a huge change (about a chapter’s length shorter), but it sets up Frostbite beautifully, which will likely be my longest novel yet.

Once I’ve wrapped up the Mage’s Trilogy by April of 2020, I think I’m going to step away from Erde for a moment and let Amethyst and Elias hold the spotlight for a bit before moving on. I’ve been immersed in this world since I started writing it in July of 2015 (and honestly, 20+ years before that), and I’ve got some other ideas and settings that have been patiently waiting their turn. They deserve my attention too. I think the short story/novella collection I had planned for after Frostbite is going to get pushed in favor of another story that has been jostling for my creative attention recently.

In any case, I am going to get back to work and, well, finish this book! Thanks for reading!