I’ve been cookin’ along on these re-edits.  So much so, that I only have to do the 2nd pass on the final book in the series, and then I’ll be done with the edits themselves.  There’s a lot of other stuff I need to do after that, but as far as the main bulk of the work goes, I’m almost done!  I actually got through it all faster than I thought I would.  I don’t know how long the rest will take, but I’d like to have the whole series republished within the next two to three months, and then I’m gonna start recording audio author’s notes for each book, and I’m going to start promoting the hell out of the series.  I can’t believe I’m almost done with the re-edits though!  Yay! 😀

At 3:30am this morning I finished the 2nd edition re-edit of the 16th book, Transition.  I have six more books to go, and then I have to all the after work on them.  New covers, new synopses, print versions, etc…  Once I’m done with the entire rest of the series and have everything ready, I’ll republish books 7-22 all at once.  Books 1-6 are currently available.  The reason I stopped after book 6 was because I changed the way I was doing the re-edits.  Rather than going through each book twice, I went through the entire series, with the idea of doing a full run for the first pass, and then another full run for the second pass.

Well, I finished the first passes up through book 21, which was supposed to be the final book in the series, and then I got the itch.  I decided the series needed an epilog of sorts, so I wrote Aftermath, which picks up right after the end of book 21.  It’s more of a slice of life type of a book for the characters, and wraps up a lot of things that didn’t get wrapped up in the rest of the series.  I had a lot of fun writing it.  It’s been seven years since I wrote Genesis, but after doing the first pass on all the edits, I was able to slip right back into the story and the characters like a comfortable old shoe, and it seemed as though no time had passed at all.  Will Aftermath actually be the final book in the series?  No guarantees, but as of right now, the answer is yes.  Unless I get some inspiration for another book, then Aftermath is the final book in the series, and it’s written as such.  That’s why it ended up being eighteen chapters instead of the usual sixteen.  I wanted to make sure I got everything in there that I wanted to get in, and wrapped up everything that I needed to.

So, I’m just about to get started on the 2nd editing pass of the Travelers 2nd edition.  Travelers was always one of my favorite books in the series, for a variety of reasons.  First, it gave me a chance to create a whole new set of characters, in a different environment, with no special powers other than their wits and their bravado to see them through.  Two of those characters, Jake and Lana, became personal favorites of mine, simply because they were so much fun to write.  I’m sad that they weren’t able to be introduced earlier, but I did involve them quite a bit in the books that followed.

I’ve mentioned it before, but Travelers was originally intended to be the start of a whole new series that took place in the Unseen Things universe.  The series was going to be called Wasteland Earth, and was going to follow the characters of Travelers as they tried to survive in the aftermath of the Echnid invasion of Earth.  I wrote it because I wanted a break from the regular series, but I didn’t want to actually write anything that was outside of the Unseen Things universe, so that’s why I figured I’d write something that was related to the events at the end of the 16th book.

Well, it never did become its own series, for the simple reason that I didn’t have it in me to branch off into a whole new series when the main series wasn’t even close to being done yet, so at the end of Travelers, I worked it so that they would meet up with the main characters of the series, and become a part of their storyline going forward, rather than pushing forward with a whole separate series, as I’d originally planned.

Anyway, I just realized how long this post has become, so I’ll end it here for now.  I purposely haven’t done anything to promote the series during these re-edits, because I want to get everything republished and ready to go before I start with a major advertising blitz.  These second edition re-edits are greatly enhanced versions of the original editions, and only something I could have done once the series as a whole had been completed.  It’s been incredibly time consuming, but it’s also a labor of love, and I won’t stop until it’s all been completed.

That’s it for now.  I’ll post another update when I have something new to talk about. 🙂

I just finished writing the 22nd book in the series.  It was written as a sort of a slice of life epilogue, but it resolves a lot of things that were still left open-ended after the 21st book.  I really enjoyed writing this one.  Now I have to get back to my 2nd edition re-edits, starting with book 11.  Fortunately, the first pass is already done on 11-22, so I only have to do the second pass, and then all the other finish work that needs to be done.  I really can’t wait until it’s all done.  It’s just a god awful amount of work, and really time consuming.  At least it’s enjoyable though.

Anyway, that’s it for now. 🙂

I figured I’d go over my usual 16 chapters on this final book, but I actually ended up needing 18 chapters instead.  I’m part way through the 18th chapter now, so it’s almost done.  Will it be the final book ever?  I can’t say for sure.  It depends on if I come up with any ideas in the future.  All I can say for sure is, it’s the final book for right now.  Then I have to get back to work on my 2nd edition re-edits, so I can get the whole series released again.  The work never ceases.

Each book in the Unseen Things series has sixteen chapters.  It started out that way in the first book, and I simply continued that throughout the series, because it gets me to the word count I want to reach in each book.  However, I just finished chapter fifteen of Aftermath, and I don’t see any way I can finish things up in just one more chapter.  So, that being said, this will probably be the first book in the whole series that has more than sixteen chapters.  I’ll probably end up with 17, because what I have in mind leading up to the end will likely take up a full chapter, and I have some other stuff I need to get in before that.

Anyway, I’ve really been enjoying writing this book.  After six years of not writing anything, I fell right back into it like a comfortable old pair of slippers.  These characters are a part of me, and saying goodbye to them after I finish this book is going to be an extremely emotional experience.  There needs to be an end though, and I’ve finally reached the point where I was ready to write it.

I’m officially half way done with the writing on the 22nd book, Aftermath.  To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what this book was going to end up being when I started writing it.  Since it’s basically an epilogue book for the series, I didn’t want to get into any major storylines with it, and so far I haven’t.  What it’s mostly become is a sort of a slice of life story about what happens in the days after the incident on Genesis.  Some questions are answered that were sort of leftover after the last book, and there are some new revelations about the sim, and what plans Jarrod has for it.  I might get into some answers about the Grays, since that whole thing was sort of left hanging after they disappeared, but I’m not sure yet.

Anyway, I’ve got eight more chapters to go, and so far it’s just been flowing out of me, like all the other books did.  Sometimes I feel like I was meant to write this universe and these characters, and it’s the one great thing I’ll have done with my life.  It’s the only time I feel truly inspired.  I just regret that it’s taken me six years to write these characters again.