Writing Update: I’m Officially Over the Million Word Mark!

It’s (once again) been a while since I gave you all an update on my writing. So I suppose today’s as good a day as any to right that wrong. Interested to hear where I am on any particular project? Here’s a quick rundown of my books, in the order they were written:

1. Into the Elevator–First book. 67,000 words. Will never see the light of day.
2. Blood Countess–Second book. 15,000 words (I think I’ve lost a good chunk of writing somewhere. This is all I can find now, though.) Was to be a collaboration. I wrote my half. Will never see the light of day. (Though it did feature a Vodnik as the villain, so I suppose some of this book eventually meandered its way to publication. If I were to write a sequel to Vodnik, this is one area that is a possibility for exploration, as the setting is only a few miles from Trencin.)
3. Weaver of Dreams–112,000 words. I’ve toyed with rewriting this one from time to time. I really like the concept, but when I went back to read it, I was horrified by the text. Probably will never see the light of day.
4. Cavern of Babel–PUBLISHED! 37,000 words (89,000 total for the whole trilogy) You can read it this instant on Kindle. If you want a print copy, I’ll sell those for $5 pretty much wherever I go. Just let me know ahead of time you want one. (I actually wrote two sequels to this, but I lump them in with this single book. Odds of them getting published? Slim to none. Though I will say the name of the first sequel would be City of Lost Alpacas.)
5. Adventures of Barboy–48,000 words. Medieval fantasy romp. Will never see the light of day.
6. Vodnik–PUBLISHED! 106,000 words. You can read it right this instant.
7. Ichabod–71,000 words. One of my personal favorite books, though I do wonder if it would stand up to the memory if/when I reread it. I’ve toyed with self-publishing this for a long time. You never know . . .
8. Pawn of the Dead–65,000 words. Essentially a rewrite of Adventures of Barboy, set in my hometown and the present day. Slim chance of it ever seeing the light of day, though I suppose I could self-publish it. It wasn’t bad, from what I remember.
9. Tarnhelm–81,000 words. YA noir fantasy. Currently in submission limbo. Would love to get it published, but it might take a long time to get there. Not planning of self-publishing this one, as I think it’s good enough for professional publication.
10. Get Cupid–70,000 words. Never going to see the light of day, but pieces got cannibalized in a later book.
11. Memory Thief–PUBLISHED! 55,000 words. You can buy it right this instant. (Not available as an ebook yet.)
12. Our Lady of Questionable Morals–92,000 words. Currently on submission. I love this book. I really hope you all get to read it someday.
13. Book Binder’s Curse–55,000 words. A Peter Pan adaptation. I personally really like it, but other readers . . . not so much. Doubtful this will ever see the light of day.
14. Magic at 30,000 Feet–65,000 words. Fourth draft is complete and currently on the desk of my agent. I would love to get this out on submission this year.
15. Utopia–87,000 words. First draft is complete. I’m giving myself some space before I go back to read it, because this book is either crazy awesome or just plain crazy, and I need perspective to be able to judge it. I had a blast writing it, though . . . My first science fiction book, too.

Grand total? 1,078,000 words of actual finished text! Which means finishing Utopia was the book that officially brought me past my million word mark. I had no idea I’d actually written that many words, and that doesn’t include 7 projects that I started and made a good amount of progress in before I abandoned them.

And that brings us to the present day, where I’m excited to announce I’ve officially begun work on book #16. Codename: Murder Castle. I’ll go light on details for now, but I’ll say a few things about it:

• It’s my first non-fantasy, non-sci-fi book. Straight up historical murder mystery/suspense.
• It’s still YA (of course), though the plan is for it to be on the older side of YA.
• I’m already 6,000 words into the book, give or take. (I’m free writing at the moment, getting a sense of the voice and exploring a few scenes scattered across the story. I have an idea of the plot, but it might get refined some more.)
• My main character is the third female POV character I’ve written. My first two books had girls in the starring role, but I haven’t written one since. (Well, technically Buttersby in Cavern of Babel is female, but I’m going to say alpacas don’t quite count the same way.)

It feels great to be writing new material again. It brings its own set of difficulties (getting to know a new POV character well enough to write them and do them justice, figuring out plot tangles, etc.), but I love it.

Here’s to anothe million!