Slight detour

Ah, the downside to starting a random, unrelated project in the middle of a book series. ... I just got edits back on my little side project, which went from novella to full-blown novel. That said, I'm going to be working on the edits this week. Then it's back to Ever-land and the assortment of villains that Wren and Ever are up against.

Wait, what happened to Alex? you ask.

*** Insert evil laughter here ***

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Third book in The Ever Series has its bad guy

Okay. So I'll admit it. When I first started writing For Ever, its characters were kind of a mystery to me -- except for Wren, since I was in her head. No irony there, right?

As for Ever (and Iago, *wink* *wink*), I really didn't have much of a preconceived notion about them. However, overall I knew that I didn't want them to be "good" or "bad." Hmm, that's not completely true. At first, I sort of thought that Iago was going to be a straight-up bad guy. Then -- whoops. It didn't happen. He evolved and turned into someone I wasn't expecting.

 That's the way I like my stories. You may start off thinking you know what to expect, but then the characters surprise you. I never try to predict their choices, because -- in my head -- their decisions feel very spontaneous. Which is why I totally sobbed while I was writing the end of both For Ever and Never.

 For those of you loyal souls who have been following this little blog, which I've been neglecting of late, you'll know that I took a break from the third book recently to work on a side project. (Sorry, it's going under a pen name!) Well, when I "finished" writing it, something felt off. I couldn't tell what it was, but the story just didn't feel complete as it was. Feeling very restless and dissatisfied, I went back and wrote an insanely depressing epilogue, which made me bawl my eyes out. I probably won't publish it with the book, but I felt better knowing it was there. Sick, no?

 Back to my original point. The third book in The Ever Series has its (second) villain so far, and I hate, hate, hate him. In a good way.

 Now a word from Sever's villain ...

The third book in The Ever Series

Crossing my fingers right now. I'm really hoping to be done with my non-Ever project very soon. Of course, it turned into a 100,000-word monster that I can't publish under my real name, but such is life.

The minute I get back to The Ever Series, I'll post. For those of you who have stuck with me, thank you. I'm gearing up for a giveaway, but for now, I leave you with this ...