It’s a weird feeling. After giving myself some breathing room for the last month (not all of it voluntary; see laptop issues), I’m diving back into writing. There are two things of note here.

First, All Flames Cast  is still in the alpha read phase. I have four more alphas still working through it, but the first three have finished! I gotta say, it’s a curious feeling. For the first time ever, somebody has read a book that I wrote, in its entirety. This is a scary feeling, but pretty exciting, too. Initial reviews were actually pretty good, but one plot line is going to need a lot of work on the next draft. That’s on the backburner, though. Because…

…I’m really underway on Magisterium now! As of this Monday, I wrote the first words of the book. I’m not really diving into the draft yet, of course, but one of my character sketches is going to end up being a scene. I’m firmly into the worldbuilding process as of now, and I have the prologue and three chapters outlined.

If all goes according to plan (spoiler: it won’t), this book will be significantly shorter than All Flames Cast. I don’t want to write another 150k word novel for this one. In fact *takes deep breath* Magisterium might be properly classified as a YA fantasy. When I first got the idea for this story, that was really, really not the case. But as I started doing character sketches, priorities changed. I’ll probably do another post fairly soon, talking about the new process I’m using for Magisterium, and I’ll do into a little more detail there on the character changes.

Anyway, the fact is that it’s exciting to get going. Forcing myself back into a proper writing schedule is going to be tough, especially with the new job, but things are starting to gain steam. I have high hopes for Magisterium.