I just finished chapter 5 of Genesis, and I’m super happy with how it’s been turning out so far.  I’m doing something really deep with one of the characters, and I have a seriously cool ending planned.  This is the final book of the series, so I want to end it on a note that’ll leave people satisfied.

I will say that writing this book has made it clear to me that the series has reached its end.   I could write books that focus on different places or people in the Unseen Things universe and probably go on with it forever, but at this point I just don’t have any story left to tell that wouldn’t feel like I was dragging it out just for the sake of dragging things out.  This series has been a huge part of my life, and the characters have become family to me, so it’s really sad that it’s coming to an end, but it’s also exciting in a way.  Not only because I’m ending it in a way that involves story elements that I’ve had in mind for quite some time now, but also because I’m ending it in a way that I can be personally satisfied with.  Once it’s done, I’m not going to look back on it with any regrets about how I shouldn’t have ended it, or how I could have maybe done just one or two more books.  Does that mean I’ll say goodbye to it forever though?  I don’t know the answer to that question.  Maybe yes, or maybe not.  I may write the occasional Unseen Things short story to post here on the official site, but as far as full length novels go, this one will be the last of the series.

So what’s coming after that?  Well, my recent publication of Cindy’s Story has inspired me to write more solo novels.  I’ve had a few ideas running through my head about what to do next, but I haven’t settled on anything yet.  In Delain’s new album, they have a song that has the word “entropy” in the lyrics.  I sort of latched onto that word when I heard it and it gave me a story idea, but I’m not sure what to do with it yet.  I’m still sorta ruminating over it.  Thing is, something like that wouldn’t have much humor in it.  It would be seriously dark in its story, which isn’t a bad thing I suppose.  Cindy’s Story had a ton of humor in it, and the Unseen Things series has had quite a bit of humor as well, so I’ve never written anything that was really dark.  Perhaps it’s time for me to do that?

Thing is, I don’t want to be consistent as a writer.  Quite often writers pigeon hole themselves into a certain genre, but I’ve never been like that.  The Unseen Things series for example started out as contemporary fantasy, and then morphed into sci-fi, but there are other genre elements mixed into the series as well, including comedy, drama, action, etcetera.  Cindy’s Story is the same way.  It contains some of the best comedy I’ve ever written, though it also incorporates some drama and even a little action in a few scenes.  Now if I write a dark novel, I’ll be making use of even more genre elements.  Consistency of genre may be fine from a sales aspect, but from a personal aspect, it’s not very satisfying.  It’s my hope that as people discover my novels, they’ll enjoy my writing style and stick with me regardless of what genre any particular novel of mine falls into.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’ll post more updates down the road as things progress further.

So the three print books I ordered from CreateSpace…I checked through them and found that pieces of dialog were together instead of having a line space between them.  This was because I had to line up the text with the top of each page, and as such I removed line spaces to do so.  This was also because Word totally screws the pooch.  It would knock a word that came close to the margin down to the next line every so often, and it totally threw everything off.  The copies are readable and it’s not a huge problem, but it does happen here and there.

So that brings me to yesterday.  Before I noticed that this had happened, I resized the top text on the cover to make it fit a little better.  This caused a 24 hour approval delay during which the print version was not available.  I discovered the formatting issue during this time, and proceeded to fix it by using hard page breaks on each page.  So I get done doing that in a 398 page book, and then I upload it…and CreateSpace says that the gutter size needs to be bigger for a book with this number of pages, even though the previous version had pages within that range and it never complained once about it.  So I had to increase the gutter size, but then guess what happened?  That’s right, it totally screwed the pages all up.  I had to go back through the entire damn book and re-do every single page break.

Anyway, I got it re-uploaded now, so I’m just waiting on the 24 hour approval thing, and then the paperback will be available once again.  This was entirely Word’s fault, and I would love to personally kick the asses of everyone who worked on programming that piece of crap.  It’s such a pain to work with, and more often than not screws everything up instead of handling formatting the way it’s supposed to.  Ugh…what a day.  Anyway, the fixed version of the paperback should be available tomorrow or the next day, and I personally checked each page this time in the proof viewer to make sure it was all correct.

I got my first three copies of Cindy’s Story paperbacks yesterday.  As you can see the text on the top needs to be resized slightly, which I’ve already done.  I’m just waiting for CreateSpace to pull their finger out and approve the updated cover image.  All in all, I’m really happy with it, and it’s a lot thicker than I thought it’d be.  I only bought three to start with because I wanted to make sure they were ok before I bought more.  I’ll buy a full batch once the new cover’s approved, and then I’m going to take them to a local book store to see if they’d be interested in carrying them.

Anyway, just a little update on that.  I’m into chapter four of the final book of the Unseen Things series.  Yes, this will be the final book in the series, and I have a great ending planned for it.  It’s sad to bring it to an end, but I just don’t feel like I have any more story to tell after this one, and I want to move on to other standalone projects.  It was great writing a series, but I really want to focus on solo novels like Cindy’s Story from now on.

That’s it for now.  I’ll post more updates when I have something of interest.

I’ve added a Standalone Novels section to the forums and included a forum for Cindy’s Story.  I realized that now that I have something published aside from the Unseen Things series novels, and will have more standalones coming in the future, it was time for me to do that.  So if you’d like to discuss Cindy’s Story, or any of the Unseen Things series novels, just register on the forums and have at it.

I’ve started work on the next and probably final book of the Unseen Things series, Genesis.  The first chapter is complete, as is the cover and all the other associated graphics.  I’m doing something with this one that I’ve had rolling around in my head for quite some time now, so I figured that since this was likely going to be the final book in the series, it was time to pull the rabbit out of the hat so to speak.

Anyway, after I get this one done and published, I’m going to concentrate on writing and publishing some more single novels, like Cindy’s Story.  I’m not sure what they’ll be yet, but I’ve never had all that much of a hard time coming up with ideas.  I’m sure whatever I come up with will be purely awesome, and I say that in the most awesomely humble way possible. 😉

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’ll pop in to post an update every now and then.