Weekend Update: Some Progress

For a while now, my current work-in-progress Creed: Solomon’s Fortune has been giving me headaches. I think this was the toughest book I’ve written yet, and it took a long time for the full story to truly reveal itself to me. I took a couple breaks, jumped around in the timeline a bit, and just generally procrastinated.

But as I near the end of the first draft, I’m finally hitting my stride. I think the additions I made to earlier parts in the book have worked well and have helped the vision I had in my head flourish on the page. I brought in a second antagonist this time, and I also devoted more ‘screentime’ to the romance between two characters, allowing it to flow a bit more realistically.

But the prologue I added a while back, which serves to introduce the main antagonist, is so far my favorite change to the story. I’ve given this bad guy a lot more space in the pages than probably any other villain I’ve written, so the reader can get much more familiar with her. She’s quite like President Cyrus Arthur from Her Name Was Abby, but perhaps even more cold-blooded. You can read her introduction here.

Anyway, the story is rapidly approaching the climactic struggle and I can hardly wait to write it out! It should be an even more thrilling conclusion than the first Creed story.

However, I’m beginning to wonder if this should also be the final Creed book. With how difficult this second one has been, I’ve started to wonder if it’d be wise to attempt a third one. These have been unexpectedly tricky to write, and on top of that with each successive book it becomes even harder because there’s even less material to work with; the last thing I want is to write a book where the reader is left saying, “You literally just did this in the last book!”

So I’m now left tweaking the ending a bit. Whereas before it was going to be an open ending to segue into third book, I’m going to attempt a soft closing of the door so that the story is completed in case I do in fact shelve this series, but with a tiny opening to get my foot in the door, should I choose to continue this series.

Last of all, next week on April 4th I’ll finally be able to submit Creed to a publisher! Evolved Publishing is the company. Last year I submitted the entire His Name Was Zach series and they actually replied to me to request the full manuscripts. They rejected the series, but I did get to that second step with them so I’m hopeful that Creed will be more to their liking. But this is my last attempt at a traditional publisher for this series. If they don’t take it, I will in fact self-publish.

As always, thank you for reading and being a part of this writing adventure!