An ending

One of the things I love about writing is the feeling I get from time to time after having created something and looking at it as objectively as I can possibly manage, and think “That’s pretty damn good there.”

I just had that happen with my ending. In the last version I sent out to my alpha readers, I thought the ending was a little weak. I wanted two things, one, I wanted a more dramatic end to the final battle, and two, I wanted something that could be used as a hook into additional stories.

I think it works in both cases.

I’ve got some POV overlap still to hack out, but I’ve hacked about half of it out already, and things still look good, so I am pretty confident that my final edit will get what’s left.

I also want to spend some time just fine-tuning and polishing the character development and dialogue. I have pretty much concluded that all the advice writers get about everything boiling down to your characters is pretty good advice. I want my characters to be memorable.

Getting real close. While this will be the fourth novel I will have written and taken to completion (excepting final professional editing), in some ways it’s really just the second. I had the entire story line for The War Chronicles pretty well laid out, and had always intended for it to be one story, broken into three books, so this is only the second story I’ve taken this far.

And sci-fi is really my preferred genre too, although I do love good fantasy. It sort of surprised me that my first published fiction works would be the parts of an epic fantasy.

I think I will plan on getting pitch advice and other advice from the Superstars conference on this book. I didn’t take much advice on The War Chronicles. I just bulled my way forward. This time I think I’m going to be more measured. I can always start on my fifth novel while working on the sale and/or marketing of this one.

Feeling better and better about Mountain Home. And this ending just rocks.