So, if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I’m putting out a new series.You also likely know it’s been a good bit since I’ve had anything really super new. (shush;)… Wait no more!

The Legacy of the Lost Mage series is definitely based in the Chanmyr universe- so there will be a lot that’s familiar, and a lot that’s new, also. Like Magic! Woohoo!  While I’ve loved delving into a region where magic is broken, and Kirrin becomes an assassin, I definitely got tangled up in the existing books. I was perpetually revising and reworking them, trying to make them better. To understand what didn’t work. it became such a tangled mess that I couldn’t keep track of old material versus new material and how to keep tabs on the parts I wanted to salvage.

That whole thing led to a vicious cycle. Writing became such a challenge. It stopped being fun. I was so stressed over what I was missing that it became exhausting. I got caught in a definite cycle of writer’s block. Or writer’s burnout?  Not sure that’s a term.. But I think it should be;)

At this point, I was about halfway through reworking the first Jedda book, Before Luck Runs Out. It became such a quagmire of what I had, what I wanted to keep, and places where information repeated itself because of moving blocks of text around. I hated every moment of it.

SO- when I had the idea of a quick, crank out a fast and easy series, something totally new, and fun, and to see if I could put out a book every 2 months or so.

Well- then I ran into the other type of block. (There really are only two kinds of blocks. The frst, we were just talking about, plot-block, and the other, life-block.).  I ran into health issues, and a very real scare with a small tumor in a lung, and auto-immune conditions etc. So, I just didn’t have a lot of psychic energy until it was determined that the tumor is such a small and slow-growing thing that may have been there for 30 years– so not to panic, just to monitor it.

So- with that bit of life-block no longer taking up all of the real estate, I was able to put some focus back into writing.

In the revisions of Jedda’s story— which you haven’t seen yet– I introduced another half–faenyr character, Kadaris. She started with just a name, I didn’t even know if it was male oor female. It just came to me, and I sat on it, neatly tucked away for just the right place. And there it was, in Jedda’s series, and even though it was a small introduction, I knew she would play a factor, moving forward.

Then, I decided that since I needed a new story, Kadaris was a great place to start. The first book, Winter Mage, was supposed to be a short introduction. But then we realized that since Fern is her counterpart, that she should be included right from the beginning.

Winter Mage was slow going. But then the second book, things got a little better. Then, the third book– things hit a roll and I was having a lot of really soid days with word counts up to 5k on some days.

So- this started to be about life blocks and plot blocks– but I guess it was more about the background of Winter Mage. Funny, how stories take directions we never imagine:)