Probably the hardest thing for me when it comes to writing is my consistency. At times I can go for days being immersed in my writing and plotting, figuring things out and keeping up on what needs to come next. Then there are days where it just slogs along. But now I feel like I have a hundred things to do, and not enough time for any of it.

I’m not excusing myself from not posting sooner, but it has definitely been harder to find time with everything that has been happening. Between the last time I made a post and today, a lot has happened.

Back in August I realized that I made a horrible mistake with my schooling and that I could not, in fact, take online classes. I immediately had to pivot and sign up for in person classes that started that week! I worked as much as I could with my manager to keep my job for as long as I could, but within a matter of days I found myself a full time student instead of a full time employee. That’s right, I quit my job back in August, and even though I wasn’t both working and going to school anymore, I was still doing a lot. Since I’m going back to school to become a teacher a lot of my homework actually involved being in classes and sometimes teaching those classes. It was a lot of work.

In November and December (when I was originally planning on writing the next update) it was busier than expected. I was able to get approved for some school grants to go to an English Teaching conference that was being held in Denver, Colorado. It was great and I learned a lot from all of the classes that I went to. Now, eariler in the year (when I still had a job and I didn’t know about all the classes I would have to take in person) my wife and I had a crazy idea that it would be fun to have 2 vacations in 1. So from Thanksgiving to December 4th, I was able to go on my first cruise to Ensenada, Mexico, and then go to Disneyland afterwards.

It was a blast and we had a great time on the sea, the only problem was that a few of our kids got sick. But it wasn’t horrible and we didn’t spread it, it just meant we stayed in our cabins the last day of our trip instead of doing some of the fun activities available to us. But we weren’t worried about the loss of fun time, because immediately after that, we went straight to Disneyland!

Crazy, I know. Why would we do that to ourselves? Well the cruise was paid for by some family that really wanted us to come, and we already had money set aside for a trip so we thought, why not?

We also figured that since the cruise ship was setting sail from a port in L. A. it made sense just drive the hour distance to Anaheim and go to Disneyland. Oh how naive we were. We had a blast and things were great, but taking 2 vacations in 1 was not the smartest idea. By the second day into our 3 days at Disneyland, we already had blisters forming from not giving our feet the break they needed after doing a lot of walking on the cruise. By the end of our 2 week vacation we were blisterd, sore, and in need of a good vacation from our vacation.

But it didn’t end there. Within days of us being back home we started getting sick. For the rest of December it was just a rotating wheel of who was sick next. I was barely able to finish my school finals, and even on Christmas morning a few of our kids were still a little sick. I was not fully feeling 100% until just after the new year. Right in time for me to start my student teaching.

That’s right, I am now only 1 semester away from completing my Master’s Degree and being able to teach full time! Like I said before, I wanted to write this post around December, but fate conspired against me. I barely found the time to write this with how busy I am. Essentially, I am roughly at the half way point in my last semester and I can finally see the light at the end of this tunnel.

Writing Progress

Now perhaps you were wondering about my writing and where I am at with everything? I haven’t given up, but I also haven’t officially added anything new to my first draft in a while. The last time I posted I was at about 30,000 words into the Dark Lord book. As of right now I’m at about 40,000 to 45,000 words. So that’s roughly about 2-3 more chapters that I wrote. Again, because of how busy I’ve been with school I haven’t been able to write as much as I wanted to, but I’ve been able to do something better.

For a long time I have been frustrated with my process in writing where I’ll do a little bit of worldbuilding, a little bit of outlining in my head, and then jump straight into the story having to make stuff up as I go along. This has made the writing process so much harder since I was essentially stumbling and wandering around in a semi-dark room. I realized a few months ago that the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t write the books, the problem was that I hadn’t done enough outlining of my books. My stories weren’t working because I hadn’t put in enough work to make them work. Plot lines and story threads that I had written before were sounding similar, or derivative of other stories I’ve read, or the plot was just too plain and simple. This was what had happened to me with the Aether Force Chronicles. I had a story, but I hadn’t done enough to really understand what the characters goals were.

I realized that in order to fix this, I needed to properly work at the outlining process so I could put to paper what I wanted in my story and how I wanted it to go. For the past 2 months I have been chipping away at my outlines for my books. I’m hoping to have multiple POVs in the Dark Lord series and have part of the story set in the past. It has been really hard making sure that the two different timelines not only match up, but that the story makes sense. Besides writing outlines, I have been looking at each character that I plan on introducing to the story and seeing what their primary goals and dreams are. It’s gotten to the point that I’m thinking of having some online videos of what these steps look like and how it can help in the writing process. My main goal is to be done outlining by the time I graduate, and when the summer hits I’m going to go straight into writing the first book of the Dark Lord series in earnest.

I already have about 9 or 10 chapters written, so I will need to go back and review/edit those chapters to fit what my overarching goals are from all the outlining I’ve done. Once I catch up to where I’m at I’ll keep writing from there. I do plan on writing more in the Aether Force Chronicles, but I feel I have more done with the Dark Lord series that it warrants attention first. My initial thoughts on the Dark Lord series when I first started writing it was that it would only be 3 books. That has since changed. I’ve almost completed the outline for book 2 and I can see that there’s no way this is going to be done as quick as I thought it would be. This series is looking to be easily 4 or 5 books long. I am super excited for this and will look forward to when I can start asking for beta readers after the summer.

Book Reviews

During the last 7 months since I posted last, I have definitely read a lot. Since then I have read 3 of the currently 4 books out from the Songs of Chaos series.

It is a great series and is very reminiscent of Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, and the Inheritance Cycle. I give it 5/5 on a rating. It has some of the usual tropes that comes with dragon rider books, but it has been amazing and I am super excited to see how Michael R. Miller finishes off the series in the last 2 books.

The next book that I had the privilege to read was And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

This book was a wonderful mystery to get into and I’m so glad that I finally got to read this classic. I know this isn’t one that really needs much talk and hype for as a classic, but I still feel it is worth the mention since most of the books I have reviewed on here tend to be fantasy related. If you are wondering, yes I did read this because I will be introducing it to my student teaching class in about a month and I needed to be prepared.

The next book that I read because of my student teaching is actually a play. 12 Angry Men written by Reginald Rose.

The one I read before I taught it to my class was actually the audio recording that can be found on Audible and was released in July of 2006. It is a fantastic play and brings into question the role of a jury and what it means to be biased, and how being biased is not always the same from person to person. Overall, I would give it a 5/5 because of the themes that are found inside, and the overarching narrative of why we have the system we do.

I know that there are still a lot of books out there to read and my TBR pile is just growing every day. I am currently still listening to book 2 in the Tales of the Amulet series by Robert and Dan Zhangari, and I already have my next few books lined up once that is finished. Like I said before, once I graduate this May I’m really hoping to hit it hard with writing and get as much as I can done and to read as much as I can.

I want to share with you guys what I have written, especially since some of my chapters have been published through the Utah Valley University’s Warp and Weave Journal. So if you want you can head over to Stories or click here to go the Dark Lord series page I have for it.