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.

So, yeah.  When I sat down this morning, my goal was to update the author notes and synopses on books 7-10.  That was my goal anyway.  What actually happened is that I started working on a new book.  The 22nd book in a series that was supposed to have ended at book 21.  I mean, I specifically wrote book 21 to be the final book, but as I came to the end of my first editing pass, I started thinking about how I’d open the next book if I did one, and what it would generally be about.  I got the opening so far, but that’s about it.  I’m just sorta typing, and letting it all come out as it will, just like I did with the others.  It’s been six years since I finished the final book in the series, so picking it up again now to write another book…I don’t know.  It just sort of feels right in a way.  This book will start the morning after the party they were about to have at the end of the last book, but where it’ll go from there, I’m not sure yet.  I’m already 2,008 words into the first chapter, so we’ll see what happens.

Anyway, that’s it for now. 🙂

I’ve been just plowing through the 1st pass edits on the series ever since I started doing it this way from book 11.  I just finished the 1st pass on book 19, and I’m about to start book 20.  After I finish book 21, I’ll have to go back to start from book 11 again to do all the second passes, and then I’ll do all the finish work on them after that. (print versions, new covers, new synopses, etc…)

Book 21 was the final book in the series, but I’ve often thought about what I could do beyond that, if I actually wanted to write a 22nd book.  I did have one idea kinda floating around in my head, but I’m not sure how well it would work.  Once I get the whole series republished, I might start work on a 22nd book, just to see how it plays out.  Book 21 was originally written to be the final book in the series, but I love my characters, and I love writing them, so book 21 may not be the end for them.  I did write one other non-series book, and that went ok.  I’ll still have to re-edit that one into 2nd edition as well when I’m done with the series, but when I think about writing books that aren’t a part of the series, it’s like…I don’t know.  The Unseen Things series all just sort of poured out of me organically.  It was all so easy that it felt like it was something I was meant to do.  I did try to write a horror/revenge/paranormal kind of a standalone story a few years ago, but I sort of hit a dead end because I just wasn’t feeling it.

The Unseen Things series started out as me sitting around bored one day and deciding that I wanted to try writing a book again, which was something I’d failed at many times before.  I came up with a random idea off the top of my head that was considerably different from what the series actually ended up being, and I just started writing.  I did the whole series organically, except for maybe two ideas that I’d had along the way, but I didn’t even plan those out.  I just knew what I wanted to do in general terms.  One of those ideas became the whole main plot for the final book in the series, so I had to wait until I reached that book to use it.

Exactly two years after I’d started, I finished the 21st and final book in the series.  It was an emotional thing for me, and it was difficult for me to say goodbye to the characters that I’d put so much of myself into writing.

The whole 2nd edition project came about because my skills as a writer, and as an editor, both vastly improved from the time I wrote the first book.  I wanted the series to reflect my endgame writing and editing skills, plus it gave me a chance to beef up various aspects of the story.  Many of the earlier books I ended up adding 17-22K words.  Now that I’m in the final books of the series, my writing skills by this point had improved so much, that I’ve barely had to add anything.  Mostly at this point it’s just fixing little things like commas, phrasing, etc…

I still have a long road ahead of me and a lot of work to do, but in the end this series is the one major accomplishment in my life that I can be truly proud of, so I want it to be just as good as it can possibly be.  The first six books have been republished already, but the rest I’ll be publishing all at once when I get everything done.  Then, from that point on, it’ll be all about promotion.

I’d love to see the series turned into either a TV show or a series of movies someday, but I need to finish up the 2nd editions and get them all republished before I could even think about something like that.

Anyway, I’m just sort of taking it easy today.  I blew through the first editing pass of the 19th book in like two days, just because it needed so little work, so it’ll do me good to take a day off to catch up on my rest before I tear into book 20.

That’s it for now.  Until next time… 🙂