And so we approach the end of another year.

In many ways, 2016 was a great year for me, personally. I hit some major life milestones in the past twelve months, not the least of which were getting engaged and buying a condo. All in all, it was a successful year on that count.

But on the writing side, 2016 was much more of a failure. I hoped to achieve a few things, none of which got done.

I was hoping to finish a draft of On the Strings of Oblivion, book 2 in Chronicle of the Sons. I did complete the outline and write about 20,000 words, but decided I needed to shelve the book for a while. With the status of All Flames Cast up in the air, I felt it necessary to leave Strings open for any revisions that AFC needs.

So, with that on the backburner, I turned my attention this fall to outlining and taking notes for a potential NaNoWriMo novel: And the Gates Opened. This was both successful and a total disaster. It was successful in that I enjoyed one of the main characters a LOT, and the writing flowed pretty well. It was a disaster in that November is a terrible month for me to try to write a book. The biggest business trip of the year for the agency I work at takes place at the end of November, and that meant I realistically only had about two weeks to work on And the Gates. By the time we finished up in London and came back to Colorado, my mind had gone to work on And the Gates and picked it apart too much for me to go back at it.

Which leaves me where I am now.

I will finish a novel in 2017. It probably won’t be as hefty as All Flames Cast turned out (144,000 words took a ton out of me), and will likely be a standalone.

And so, as of today, I officially begin work on a new novel: Empire of the Ebon Sky. Keep an eye out for an excerpt from the first chapter, which I wrote a couple weeks ago, to pop up on here. I hope you all like that little taste of what I have brewing for the next 12 months.