Wow, this is only my fifth blog post of the year and my first since June. I’m not the most prolific blogger anyway, but it’s about a fifth of the posts I made last year. I suspect, in part, the difference is that last year I was publishing A Divided River and, therefore, had a bit more to talk about and this year has been heads down working on The Theatre of Shadows and other things. That and time has been more precious and writing and editing novels and novellas has taken priority over the blog.

So on that note it’s time for a little update on my 2018 To Do List.

Edit and publish The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.

The editing continues. I recently finished the third draft. I’m taking a break from it for a bit while others have a read of it. Once I have their thoughts, there’ll be a fourth draft.

As mentioned here, despite my hopes this does mean it won’t be published until next year.

Edit and try to work out how to publish a long novel.

My break from The Theatre of Shadows does mean I get to spend some time editing my long supernatural noir novel. After I’ve done another draft on this I’m going to put some thought into how I want to publish it.

It’s proven easy to slip back into it after such a long gap. But given that it’s been floating around in my head since I was 17, it is a very old friend and it shouldn’t be that surprising it’s so easy to pick up where I left off.

Write and edit the next Tales From Vasini

As reported back in April, I’ve finished the first of the two novellas for the next Tales From Vasini book. I’m now coming to the end of the first draft of the second story (as I also mentioned in April, work was slow going on that story and has continued to move slower than I’d hoped). Both stories will sit in a draw (well, on my laptop at least) for a little while then I’ll start work on editing them.

Finish writing and then edit a novella.

The non-Vasini novella I was working on at the beginning of the year – a sequel to The City Between the Books – has gone through an edit. I’ll be asking some people to look at it before I start on the next draft.

Between this novella, Tales From Vasini II, the supernatural noir novel and The Theatre of Shadows it could mean that after not publishing anything for the past year, 2019 could see the beginning of a run of publishing if all of the books are completed as (fingers very firmly crossed) they seem like they may be.

Write The Vasini Chronicles III.

This won’t be happening this year, or at least not the actual writing.

Given everything else that I’ve been working on and that the second Tales From Vasini II story is taking longer than expected to complete, I’ll likely only get through some more research and start to flesh out the plot ahead of the New Year. Added to that, I’m almost certain that I’ll write an associated story (Tales From Vasini III) before starting writing The Vasini Chronicles III.

Read at least 36 books and cut down my backlog of unread books (now at over 340 books).

Done. According to Goodreads I’ve read 48 books so far this year. My backlog of unread books is now down to 316 books. Unlike writing, my reading doesn’t seem to have been impacted so much by time constraints, possibly, in part, because where as I can read while brushing my teeth, I’m not sure the results would be so good if I attempted to write with a toothbrush in one hand and toothpaste dripping from my mouth.

Saga Volumes 8 & 9 have been my favourites so far this year. Riverwind – The Plainsman has been the biggest disappointment. It was another attempt, after Tanis – The Shadow Years and Flint the King last year, to indulge my nostalgia for the Dragonlance novels. As with Tanis, for me much of the novel didn’t really embody the setting of the Dragonlance novels (although maybe they do and my memory of the Dragonlance Chronicles is too warped by time to make a fair comparison). Despite this, I still seem to want to indulge my nostalgia, so no doubt I’ll be reading another Dragonlance novel at some point in the future. Fingers crossed it hits the mark.