Facing The Unknown

Unknowns and gray areas have always raised anxiety for me in real life, yet those places are where everything interesting happens in fiction.

In Rosemary’s Baby, which I wrote about last week (and which is one of my favorite books), the antagonists clearly fall into the evil camp from the readers’ perspective, no matter how they try to justify their actions to themselves.

In contrast, in the most well known virgin pregnancy story in the western world, that of the Virgin Mary, the reader is meant to see the pregnancy as an unqualified good. Mary is portrayed, to the extent she is featured at all, as troubled at first but then quickly honored and grateful for her role. (It helps that an angel explains everything to her.)

For The Awakening Series, I put Tara, the protagonist, smack in the middle of those extremes. The many unknowns in her situation struck me as more realistic, and more anxiety-provoking, than Mary’s story.

Things happen to almost all of us that we didn’t expect and didn’t ask for. Rarely is there a reason for them that makes any sense, yet we need to deal with them. 

Often those events change us and the course of our lives in ways people around us struggle to understand.

Also, the unknown often poses the greatest emotional challenge. Fearing you’ll lose your job or a loved one can become so painful and scary that it’s almost worse than things that actually happen. Once something occurs, I can take steps to handle it no matter how bad. Beforehand, though, I can only imagine how awful it will be.

As Mark Twain said, “I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

How different people deal with the unknown also causes great conflict, particularly when it comes to religious faith.

Some people find in religion definite answers, if only to say “it’s God’s will.” Others find that same concept deeply disturbing, as it can sound as if some all-powerful being targeted them for misfortune.

My mom & dad at their 50th anniversary.

I personally struggled with the things people say in the wake of tragedy after my parents were killed by a drunk driver.

People said what they may have meant to be helpful, but in words that reflected what they needed to believe to feel all right about the world again. Often their words sparked anger and frustration in me, yet I felt unable to express that because I didn't want to be rude or hurtful to those who were likely trying to offer sympathy in the best way they knew how.

Though it's an entirely different situation, those feelings and experiences are part of the conflicts in The Awakening series, as well meaning people of strong but different faiths and world viewpoints clash with one another.

I suppose all writers deal with their demons in one way or another through what they write. The gray areas—and the unknowns—these are mine.

Found Families, Conflict, And The Road To Hell

Of all her family members, my protagonist Tara’s stepdad, Pete, struggles the most with her supernatural pregnancy.

When I was writing early drafts, though, Pete was so supportive that it made for dull reading.


One suggestion I got to heighten the conflict was to show Pete feeling frustrated that he was raising this child who was not “his own.”


This view would lead to him to be more impatient and disbelieving when Tara claimed to not know how she became pregnant.

That would’ve been an easy place to go for conflict, but it didn’t appeal to me.

It struck me as too expected and unrealistic at the same time. It also didn’t interest me as much as the type of internal conflict Pete ultimately faces between his faith and his love for his daughter.

Great Expectations

The idea that Pete would see Tara as not really his daughter despite having raised her from when she was three, and so would feel more impatient with her or angry at her, seemed to me to be the expected conflict and also, ironically, contrary to reality.

As far as expected goes, it fit too well with the trope of the evil stepparent (though usually that’s the stepmother). I wanted a more complex reason than that, and I also wanted Pete to be a genuinely good person and good dad, not a stereotypical type of villain.

At the same time, the cultural view that biological or blood relations are closer and have better relationships than do people not connected by biology is often not true.

Some biological families are close and supportive, and if you have that, that’s terrific. Others, though, create far more stress and pain for one another than do the friends and families people choose and create on their own.

Finding Your Family

I feel lucky to have grown up in the family I did, though particularly as a teenager and a twenty-something, I saw mainly its flaws. I took for granted the very open definition of family that my parents had and only later realized how wonderful it was.

My brothers and I were close with many of our cousins, and our extended family frequently got together. Included in that family were several longtime friends of my parents. Those people often gave me the best advice I got when I was growing up and also served as cheerleaders for me when I was struggling.

Likewise, my mom, often quite critical of her own kids and so not necessarily the first person we went to with problems, offered help and support to some of my cousins. Sometimes it’s easier to play those roles with people who are not your own parents or children.

In creating my main character Tara’s family, I wanted to reflect those complexities and reflect the fact that you won’t always connect with your family of origin. 

Also, as is often the case in real life, Tara’s parents don’t have the knowledge or expertise to help her deal with what she needs to face. She must seek that elsewhere.

I liked exploring those other relationships Tara forms.

I also liked showing that her parents could grow and change when challenged with a difficult — actually, an unbelievable — situation, and that the parent/child relationships could evolve.

The Road To Hell

The saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions stuck in my mind as I created Pete, though I don’t see him as going to hell by any means. (I also always remember an Ernest Hemingway character saying the road to hell was paved with unbought stuffed dogs, but that’s an entirely different article.)

In Pete, I created a character with deep faith in the Catholic Church. Pete grew up all over the world because his father was in the military. Catholicism was an anchor in his life. When he went to mass, no matter what language was spoken, he understood went to sit or stand or kneel and what was happening.

(I drew that part of Pete’s background from a visit to a church in Florence when I was traveling alone. I went in to see the architecture but stayed for a mass. Despite not knowing Italian, I could follow everything because it was the same pattern, prayers, and even songs that I had grown up with. Though no longer religious, I found it comforting to take part in the familiar ritual while in another country.)

As the possible meanings of Tara’s pregnancy are explored, it raises huge questions, fears, and doubts for Pete. He fears that there is some evil component to it that will hurt his daughter and challenge his faith, and he fears the child is meant to overturn the current order and undermine the Church. He also fears that his daughter has been gripped by some type of mental illness characterized by religious mania.

Pete struggles with all those fears, but what he’s really struggling with are two strong and opposing values that mean a great deal to him.

The first is supporting his child and trusting her judgment, and the second is being true to his faith and the church.

That’s exactly the type of conflict I find most compelling for a character.

Of course, I couldn’t have Pete simply sit around and think about these things, so in Book 2, The Unbelievers, he is forced to go on a quest with Cyril, whom he doesn’t trust and who behaved terribly toward Tara, to try to recover part of an ancient prophecy that may help both Tara and Pete figure out what’s going on. (Now there’s a run-on sentence.)

If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can find TheUnbelievers here in paperback, ebook, and audiobook editions.

How Stories About Mary Influenced The Awakening Series

Collyridians supposedly offered fresh-baked bread to Mary.

Last week I wrote about the inspiration for the fringe religious order that plagues my main character, Tara, throughout The Awakening Series.

Research and reading into traditional and controversial beliefs about the Virgin Mary also influenced The Awakening, though Tara's journey diverges widely from Mary's.

(For one thing, Tara's not religious, and the series is not a religious series. Also, so far as I know, there are no stories about an apocalyptic cult threatening Mary, which would have turned that part of the New Testament into a thriller, probably not the goal of its authors.)

Pure And Perfect?

In the Catholic Church in particular, Mary is viewed as "pure," "perfect," and "immaculate" because she's seen, paradoxically, as both a mother and a virgin. As a child, I assumed those beliefs stemmed from the New Testament, but there's relatively little there about Mary.

There was a lot to explore on those themes.

What if a young woman didn't see sex that way and had abstained for other reasons and found herself pregnant? What if she rejected people who tried to see her as "pure" and believed she'd give birth to a messiah?

Mother of God?

The Catholic Church granted Mary the title “Mother of God” about 430 years after Jesus was born.

The Church believed she deserved the title because she'd given birth to the human Jesus, whom the Church came to believe also was God.

This belief played into the next doctrine, that of Perpetual Virginity.

Perpetual Virgin?

Later, under a doctrine known as Perpetual Virginity, the Catholic Church decided that Mary not only was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, but she remained a virgin throughout her entire life.

This doctrine surprised me when I learned about it. The logical reason for those who see Jesus as God to believe Mary was a virgin before Jesus' birth was to show that his "father" was not human but divine. (A point Tara's mentor, a former nun and professor makes.)

But this doctrine makes a clear equation between sex and being impure--and equates perfection for a woman with abstaining from sex.

Contrary Views

Not all early Christians believed Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born, however, let alone that she remained one forever.

The Ebionites, a Jewish-Christian sect that believed in a non-divine messiah, believed that Jesus was conceived the usual way, through sexual intercourse. Later, they changed position to say that Jesus was conceived through the Holy Spirit, but still believed that after the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary engaged in sexual relations and had many children.

Excommunication

The Catholic Church rejected both views.

The Church declared heretical any belief that Mary had sexual intercourse ever, including after Jesus was born. (A heresy is a belief at odds with what Catholics must believe to be considered Catholics. Heretics are barred from the Church.)

The early Church felt so strongly about Mary remaining a virgin forever that it labeled those who held the belief that she had sexual intercourse after the birth of Jesus “Antidicomarianites”—opponents of Mary.

Collyridians, another group the Church declared heretics, went too far the other direction from the Church's standpoint. They worshipped her as divine. Most of what's known about them comes from a Bishop who denounced them. The group, mostly women, offered bread to Mary. 

(I borrowed from this lore when I envisioned a former chapel where Tara seeks sanctuary in Books 2 and 3, The Unbelievers and The Conflagration. The table in the main room features baskets of homemade bread.) 

Tara's Allies

From what I could tell, the early Church viewed these two groups as opposites--one group that saw Mary as, perhaps, too human in that she had sexual intercourse, and the other that saw her as divine. I found that intriguing, as it suggested a lot about how that religion saw women.

I also found these groups intriguing because, as with the two Andrews of Crete I wrote about last week, there was little information out there. That gave me a lot of room to take poetic license with how and whether to fit them into my story.

In case you haven't yet read the series, I won't go into detail on what role the Antidicomarianites and Collyridians play, other than to say that references to them did make life more challenging for Shiromi Arserio, the producer/narrator of the audiobook editions.

I hope you'll stop back next Wednesday for more on The Awakening Series. You can get bonus materials for The Awakening Series, including deleted scenes, here.

What's Real And What's Not: Creating The Brotherhood of Andrew (Antagonist For The Awakening Series)

When I started The Awakening Series I had two “What Ifs” in mind:

• What if a (non-religious) young woman today claimed she was pregnant but had never had sex? 
• What if a traditional religious group became convinced she would give birth to a messiah, but then learned the young woman's child would be a girl?

While each of the four books in The Awakening Series features a specific individual character as the antagonist, the real antagonist for the entire series is that religious group, the Brotherhood of Andrew of Crete.

The fourth and final book, The Illumination.

The Brotherhood needed to be traditional and Christian Order so its members would believe in the story of the Virgin Mary and would be shocked at the idea of a potential female messiah.

But I didn't want the Order to be part of an actual, specific branch of Christianity. 

As the antagonist, the Order would do things that from my main character’s perspective (and probably the reader's perspective) were evil. I didn’t want to associate that with a real religion or suggest any actual religious group was wrong or evil.

That’s why throughout the books, Brotherhood members refer to concepts that come from many different religious traditions. 

I also wanted The Brotherhood to have a saint around which to coalesce because that would make their beliefs more concrete.

My criteria for the saint included:

(1) being devoted to the Virgin Mary so that the saint was logically connected to The Brotherhood’s apparent mission of looking for signs of a new messiah

(2) dying as a martyr, as that foreshadowed danger and raised the stakes of the story

(3) having lived 600-800 years after Jesus Christ was reportedly born so that beliefs about Jesus were in flux and so the saint could not possibly have personally known Jesus or Mary

(4) not being well known so that I could take a lot of dramatic license in creating whatever back story I needed 

I found two saints who met these criteria and who conveniently shared a name – St. Andrew.

Interestingly, both were associated with Crete.

I liked having a saint from that part of the world because I planned to set some of the story in nearby Armenia, a place I’d traveled to and found fascinating because of its history as having become the first country to name Christianity as its official religion.

The martyr Andrew of Crete was executed around 767 A.D. (or C.E. for Common Era, as is more commonly used now in academia) because he defended the honoring of icons – religious images – of Jesus.

He also had a monastery dedicated to him, the Koca Mustafa Pasha Mosque in Istanbul. (That has an interesting history in itself which I’ll write about in a future post.)

While I didn’t find any particular connection between the martyr Andrew of Crete and the Virgin Mary, the other St. Andrew of Crete was known for composing and singing hymns to her. That St. Andrew was ordained a deacon at the Hagia Sophia (a location I also used in the series). In 692 he was made an archbishop on the island of Crete.

I combined these two St. Andrews into Brother Andrew, a saint to whom my fictional Brotherhood of Andrew of Crete is devoted. I added that Brother Andrew had visions about future women like the Virgin Mary and handed down a prophecy about such women and the danger to the world if events surrounding the prophecy went wrong.

Not all of this back story about Brother Andrew ended up in any of the books in the series, but I feel knowing it made my storytelling more layered.

If you’d like to know more about the two St. Andrews, you can check out the websites below.

(Fair warning if you're writing a paper on one of the Andrews and came across this article: Because I was writing fiction, I didn't make sure all my sources were well-researched and documented. I only needed enough to provide a jumping off point for my story.)

PopFlock

Catholic Online 

OCA (Orthodox Church in America)

Catholic News Agency

Bartleby.com

Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Orthodox Christian

As the story grew and changed with each book, I made tweaks to the structure of The Brotherhood, to who was in charge, and to how much each member knew about its goals. I did that both to keep it a formidable adversary and to leave room for the people within it to grow and change.

If you haven't yet finished (or started) The Awakening Series now's a great time to check it out, as the series is now complete and is available in ebook, audiobook, and paperback editions. Also, as I write this, the ebook editions of Book 1, The Awakening, are all free. 

Or read the entire series in the box set/omnibus edition.

Choose The Top Fantasy and Science Fiction Cover of 2017

We're not supposed to judge a book by its cover.

All the same, I'm really pleased that the cover for The Illumination, the fourth and final book in my Awakening supernatural thriller series, was included in Kobo Writing Life's 10 Finalists for the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy covers of 2017. (Thank you to cover designer Chrissy from Damonza!)

This poll also reminded me of a book I've been waiting for: Map of Shadows by J. F. Penn. I love Penn's London Crime Thriller series, and I'm excited to branch out into reading her other fiction. I also plan to check out the 8 other authors whose book covers are in the Top 10.

You only have until 5 p.m. Eastern Time on December 7 so hurry and vote for your favorite cover today!

Celebrate The Finale Of The Awakening Series - Chicago September 21, 2017

Please join me to celebrate releasing The Illumination, the finale of The Awakening series, and embracing life as a full-time author. We'll have an appetizer buffet, an Awakening trivia quiz, and a drawing.

Prizes include an Amazon gift card and a chance to have a character named after you in my new Q.C. Davis mystery series.

All four Awakening books will be available for sale.

Where:  Sopraffina Market Cafe, 10 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois

Date:   Thursday, September 21, 2017

Time:     5-7 p.m.

Drop in any time and feel free to bring a friend!

Look for (metered) street parking on Dearborn or one block west on Clark Street or valet ($15). Sopraffina is also close to Red, Blue, and Brown Line L stops and about 6 blocks from Union Station.

If you can make it, please RSVP to Lisa@LisaLilly.com.

Hope to see you there!

P.S. Can't make it but want to check out The Illumination and other Awakening books anyway? Visit http://www.lisalilly.com/the-illumination/.

The Illumination, Book 4 in The Awakening Series (and my 100th post)

More than the other books in The Awakening Series, writing the fourth and final book, The Illumination, required pulling together many threads. It was like a giant puzzle as well as a novel.

That made it fun. And challenging.

It was also exciting because at last Tara Spencer comes face-to-face with the forces that caused her supernatural pregnancy. She learns the truth about her child's origin—and her own—and everything rests upon what she decides to do about it.

Completing and launching the book also made me sad because I’ve spent so many years thinking and writing about Tara and the people around her.

Some, like Thomas Stranyero, began as minor characters and turned into pivotal actors in the drama. Others didn’t make it to the end. But all of them became real people to me.

All of this makes it fitting that this is my 100th blog post. I didn't plan it that way, but if I had, that's what I would have wanted.

If you haven’t yet read The Illumination , you can find it in paperback or ebook editions (Kindle, Nook, Kobo (Canada), Kobo (U.S.), iBook, or GooglePlay formats).

The audiobook is coming soon.

If you have read the series, thanks so much! Reader reviews, emails, and comments are what kept me going throughout, especially when I was also managing a law practice.

Best,
Lisa

P.S. Haven’t had enough of Tara? You can get bonus materials from the series, including deleted scenes and my handwritten notes as I was plotting The Illumination here.

An Illuminating Day -- The First Draft Of The Last Book

My plan for this blog entry was to share with you my thoughts on the 2016 Ghostbusters movie, which I loved. I had notes sketched out on a yellow legal pad (because I really like writing on those). But then this morning I realized I was so close to finishing the first draft of The Illumination, the fourth and final book in my Awakening series. So here I am, typing this at 5:35 p.m. central time. I don't have a cool post, but I do have a first draft. A day ahead of schedule.

 I admit I had a little time left to write a blog post, but instead I went onto ShutterStock and starting saving images of lightning strikes and illuminated cities and silhouettes of young woman I might want to use in a cover. I can't post them because I haven't bought any of them yet, but you can view them here. The photo on the left, which I took, gives the barest hint of what I'm looking for. Not the Sears (now Willis) Tower, as that won't be featured. But a cityscape with sky behind it that looks a bit ominous. Probably including lightning strikes. 

One thing I'm sure I'll struggle with during rewrites is the last line of The Illumination. It's a lot of pressure, writing a closing for a four-book series. The line as it reads now is bad. (No, I won't tell you what it is.) But I'll deal with that, and a host of other challenges, including how to manage so many characters, in the rewrite. While I can't promise a final line that will be amazing--though that's my goal--I can promise it'll be better than what's there now. (No, really won't tell you.)

In the meantime, I'm heading out to see Ghostbusters again to celebrate.

The Value of Retreating

One of many sunsets during the retreat.

In early July, I spent seven days at a creative retreat organized by Rabbit Hole (a company that designs live interactive gaming experiences). We stayed in a house on a river in Indiana with an outdoor grill, fire pit, and decks. While I set specific writing goals, I didn't think much beforehand about what being on a retreat means.

Today I looked up the dictionary definitions of the word "retreat." As a noun, it can mean a place of privacy that affords peace and quiet, an area where a person can be alone, an area for withdrawal for prayer and study, or the act of withdrawing or going backwards, especially to escape something hazardous or unpleasant (or enemy troops). As a verb, its meanings are similar and include pulling back or moving backward, withdrawing from enemy forces, or withdrawing to a quiet or secluded place.

In different ways, all these definitions applied. I consciously decided to withdraw for the week from unnecessary email, most social media, and business concerns.

Michelle (no longer a baby) taking a break on the dock.

I also withdrew, without really planning to, from other aspects of life. For instance, from being concerned about how I present myself. Rabbit Hole was founded by my niece Michelle Lilly and her friend and business partner Eleanor Hyde. I've hung out with Michelle since she was born (she was a super-cute baby, by the way, not that I'm biased), and the retreat included other writers, musicians, and artists who are family or are friends of Michelle. All had come to work on their own projects (games, plays, music, art), not to evaluate or do business with me. Which meant I packed and wore what was comfortable and weather appropriate without a lot of thought about how I looked. I brought only one pair of shoes--sandals with a gym-shoe like sole. In other words, I could ignore the lines most women walk every day, such as do I look:

• too young (skirt too short; hair too long; dress, skirt, leggings, or jeans too tight; sweatshirt or T-shirt too big/too loose)
• too old (too much gray in hair; skirt too long; blouse buttoned too high)
• too sexy (blouse cut too low; skirt too short; heels too high; hair too wild)
• too conservative (shoes too flat; make up too sparse or too polished; hair too straight and neither too short nor too long)
• too serious (not smiling; arms at sides)
• too silly (smiling too much; gesturing too much). 

I just wore what I wore and looked how I looked. How relaxing was that?

A cemetery a few steps from the house.

It also felt wonderful to be free of scheduling. As I wrote in my last entry, I live by schedules because that's how I make sure I get things done. But because I dropped out almost everything other than fiction writing, I felt confident I could write the number of words I wanted to write without a fixed plan. So I never set in alarm for when I would get up, and I went to bed when I got tired, rather than at a specific time.

Also, Monotone, Indiana is in a different time zone than Chicago, where I live. My laptop stayed on Central Time, the clocks in the kitchen were set to Eastern Time. The clocks in the bedroom were all blinking because apparently the electricity had gone out at one point. My iPhone kept switching time zones, which probably had to do with cell phone towers. All of this gave me a wonderful feeling of time being fluid, and of having no pressing demands.

A zombie game we played (similar narrative to Walking Dead).

Retreating means not only pulling away but moving toward. I was looking for peace and to jump start my creativity after a few busy months getting my third supernatural thriller released, finishing a semester of teaching, and writing an appeal. My plan was to relax by immersing myself in fiction writing (I'm working on The Illumination, the fourth and final book in my Awakening Series), and I did that. But I also completely enjoyed simply being in a place with all these people who love telling stories, and care about telling stories, as much as I do, and who tell them in very different ways. Michelle, Eleanor, and I spent about eight hours playing a game called Her Story. It required using keywords to search for video clips of an interview of a woman who was connected to a murder. By finding and watching the clips, which could not be seen in chronological order, we pieced together the woman's life and what had happened. So it was both a game an an alternate, non-linear way of figuring out a mystery/suspense story. As the next series I plan to write will be mysteries/legal thrillers, I not only had fun, I learned about my genre.

The house, which Rabbit Hole found through AirBnB, had a VCR and a bunch of videotapes, including the original Star Wars trilogy. So one night we stayed up late and watched Star Wars. (I admit it; I went to bed before Empire Strikes Back.) That, too, was a great experience that took me back to how I excited I felt about that movie when it came out, and the sense of wonder it engendered.

These surprises and others (including the neighbors' over-the-top fireworks displays on July 3, 4, and 5) reminded me that while focusing on productivity and sticking to schedules has served me well my whole life, it's also important to be flexible and try new things. Not just to foster creativity but to have a happy and fun life.

One of the cloudy days on retreat.

Finally, I appreciated how responsible, considerate, and cool everyone at the retreat was. Depending on the day, we had between 3 and 8 people staying in a small two-bedroom house. Everyone brought or bought more than enough food to share, washed dishes when they saw them piling up in the sink (no dishwasher), cleaned counters or tables when needed, and cooked. Those who stayed up late or got up early were mindful that others were sleeping. And we all checked with one another regarding workspaces and whether what we were doing might disturb anyone else.

The only downside for me was that while I loved taking walks, sitting near the river, and watching sunsets over the water (see photos), many, many, many bugs also enjoy the same, and are not at all put off by eco-friendly bug spray. I am pretty sure I got more insect bites in one week than I've had in the last 10 years. And I am absolutely going back if Rabbit Hole hosts the retreat again next year.

When is the last time you went on a retreat? If you haven't been on one, would you like to? Please share your thoughts and experiences below.

The Best Laid Plans Half Way Through The Year

View from Three Sixty Restaurant in St. Louis

I'm a little nervous posting this. Yesterday I had on my schedule to write out a schedule (yes, really) for the rest of the year. Which led me to defining specific goals for the second half of 2016. I tend to aim high each January with the idea that it's rare to exceed a goal. But I don't share my goals, as I'm not committing to achieving every single one unless everything works out perfectly and there are no surprises. (Surprisingly, I've never had a year like that.)

But mid-year is different. It's about priorities for the rest of the year, and a little beyond. Part of me feels like sharing them, with a timeline no less, is tempting fate. We all know the saying about the best laid plans. The part of me that struggled on and off with anxiety for many years swears by that saying. While anxiety rarely takes over anymore, it's like a broken bone that's long since healed. Every now and then--in a certain type of weather or after a wrong step--it reminds me that it was once very seriously broken and could break again.

View from Cindy's in Chicago

The other, healthier part of me knows that a career as an author and publisher means prioritizing writing and publishing. I already prioritize the part-time work I do as a lawyer and adjunct professor because other people are depending on my efforts to advance their careers and businesses. But my shift to devoting the bulk of my time to writing and publishing only works if I set realistic deadlines. Ones that account for the ups and downs I can anticipate (a larger than usual class size, an unexpected court ruling requiring an appeal at an already busy time, a family or friend or personal emergency). If everything goes far more smoothly than expected, I can always move up the schedule. But I no longer am willing to move it back.

So, here it is, my half-year check in/schedule/goal list. The Cliff's Notes version is the release date for the fourth and final book in The Awakening series, The Illumination, is May 15, 2017. If you'd like to know what else I have in the works feel free to read the details.

8/12/16:  1st Draft of The Illumination finished

8/12/16:  List of 10 topics for blog posts about Writing as a Second Career finished

8/19/16:  First 25,000 words of Illumination and outline revised to send to story editor

8/26/16:  First 5 posts of WSC blog finished, start posting one each Sunday night

9/2/16:  Next 5 posts of WSC blog finished

9/9/16:  Finish Outline of The Worried Man (working title of first book in a new legal thriller/mystery series)

9/16/16:  Next 5 posts of WSC blog finished

9/23/16:  Revision of Worried Man Outline finished

10/28/16:  Send revised Illumination manuscript (based on editor's comments & my post-break review) to Beta Readers

11/4/16:  Next 5 posts of WSC blog finished

12/23/16:  First draft of Worried Man finished

1/20/17:  Revision of Illumination based on beta readers' comments finished.

(work on Worried Man while taking break from Illumination)

2/23/17:  Final revisions to Illumination finished

(take a week off)

2/27-28/17:  Proofread and polish Illumination (minor edits only + corrections)

3/1/17:  Send Illumination to proofreaders

3/17/17:  My last proofread; add edits from others

(do not read Illumination for at least 5 days)

3/28-29/17:  Final check, all proofreading finished, manuscript finalized

3/30/17:  Manuscript to 52novels (for ebook conversion) and CreateSpace (for print publication)

(work on Worried Man revisions, blog posts, proofread ebook files, galleys)

5/15/17:  Publication date for Illumination

Oh, I almost forgot. Why the photos? Most of the action in The Illumination will be in Chicago and St. Louis, so I've given you bird's eye views of both. Which I think is appropriate for goal setting. If you'd like to keep up to date with new releases and be notified when The Illumination is available for pre-order or purchase, please join my email list.

How has your year gone? Any half-year goals or plans you'd like to share in the comment section?

Busy Week With Joss The Bird Whedon, The Conflagration, And A New Website

I can't believe another Wednesday is here already. During the past week, I finished rewrites to The Conflagration (Book 3 of 4 in The Awakening series) based on comments from beta readers. Yesterday I printed the full manuscript to review once again. I'm hoping I'll be satisfied enough to make minimal changes and send it off for final editing/proofreading early next month.

In the meantime, I've been working with Don Herion of The Sorcerer's Workshop on a redesign of my author website (and by "working with" I mean driving crazy with changes and questions that betray my lack of understanding of web design). Don created stunning book slides for the home page, as well as adapted and updated the previous site for Wordpress to make it easier for me to edit and for others to read on their phones. If you're reading this post on Blogger and would like to check out the new design for the site, click here. If you're already on the new site, hey, take a look around.

Last but not at all least, I've been keeping up with a new friend, Joss The Bird Whedon, Joss for short. He's pictured in the photo above perfecting his high wire (or is it side wire?) act. Yes, he is named for the creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, etc. Unfortunately, Joss has been under the weather for the past couple days, so I'm taking him to the vet tomorrow.

Why am I telling you all this, other than to have an excuse to post a photo of a cute baby parakeet? Well, that's reason enough, but it's also to explain why I'm writing such a short post this week. Hope you'll stop by again next Wednesday.

Stay tuned.