Writing isn’t happening tonight so I thought instead I’d give some updates and let others know what’s going on in my neck of the woods.

First, I have a full house. My daughter came home from school for the holidays so there is always someone in my living room. If it isn’t her it’s my son, who is also off school, or my boyfriend who changed his hours at work. That means recording my videos for youtube, and booktube especially, has become difficult. I’m going to have to set aside a day to do that.

January 4th will be the first episode of the “Bradbury Challenge”. More on that next month.

As for the progress on the third, and final novel of the “Witch’s Trilogy”… It’s so close to being done. I hate this part the most. When you’re close to finishing a project (i’m talking 95% finished here) and all you have to do is put in those last few chapters. It feels like you should be able to just do it, and check off each chapter. But then you sit down to write it and you realize that each of these chapters has something wrong with them, or something difficult to write.

For me it’s the fight scenes. It’s always been the fight scenes. I have to puzzle out all the moves in my head and write them out in a list, then rewrite everything as a story. It’s probably not the most efficient way of writing them but it works, and the results get me lots of compliments. But I’ve noticed that when I read I tend to gloss over the fight scenes and just pick up the highlights. I don’t care for the fight scenes in book form. I don’t even know if I care for them that much in a movie or TV show unless they really stand out for some reason (like the epic battle in Dare Devil.) Most of the time you already know who is going to win, and it’s just a matter of how. So the struggle becomes “how do I make this interesting.” And I’m not good at that…yet. I recognize that fault and so I struggle with them. I try not to write stories that contain fight scenes, but I’m dealing with epic magic and sword battles here, they are unavoidable.

I suppose I need to find some well written fight scenes to read for encouragement. Till then I need to finish this damn book.

Gregg wanted me to finish it by the end of the year. That leaves two more days to finish it. I have six chapters that I need to complete, each of which is about half finished. That’s still another 5000 words or so to completion. Can I do it in two days? I don’t think so, but I’m going to try. I’d like to get at least half of them finished, and then the entire novel complete by the end of the first week in January.

What comes after “Witch’s Stand”? More writing, of course. I have a lot of things planned for 2016. For right now I think I’m going to try and get a few more words before I finally give into the pillow calling my name.