In case you’d forgotten, I ought to remind everyone that I do actually write books. I have two (and a half) under my belt, and I was working hard on the third, up until about a year ago. Last summer was primarily taken up by our move to our new house (the first we’ve owned), and although I got a wonderful office set up, I never quite made it back to the third book.

Later, around August or September, I started revisiting the precursor to The Redemption of Erâth series, History of Erâth. For a while I was actually in a good place, managing to edit and rewrite the story in preparation for publishing it. I only just managed to make it happen, when the world collapsed around me and I entered the worst depression I’ve had in my adult life. (Many of you may remember me writing about it.)

This lasted well through the holidays and into the new year, and when I finally got back on my medication and started feeling a little better, I realized that not only had I not bothered to work on the third book in over a year, I hadn’t even moved on publishing the second. That’s what brought me to the book launch for The Redemption of Erâth: Exile in February, which to my great surprise went really well, felt good, and opened my eyes to the immense difficulties of marketing your work.

But then … things sort of faded away again. I got caught up in work, neglected to keep promoting book two, and forgot all about book three.

Until today.

As some of you know, I’m spending the summer in California, as part of a experience at my work. While I dearly miss my family (and our cat), it is providing me something I haven’t had in, well … years: time.

For the first time in ten years, I’m working a 9-5, Monday-Friday job, which allows me entire weekends off. Frankly, I don’t know what to do with so much downtime! But the advantage is that I truly now have no excuse to not write. And so … write I did.

It’s only about 1,000 words, but I finished up chapter ten of book three, and I’m feeling more than ready to dive into chapter eleven. My desperate hope is to manage to complete book three by the end of the summer, so I can finally send it off for proofing, beta-reading and editing. Then, perhaps by next year, I can get book three released—and move on to book four! This journey that I started in 2011 is starting, it feels, to bear fruit, and I’m feeling really good about the direction of the story. Believe me, I have some twists up my sleeve!

So that’s where I’m at: writing again, and it feels good. I’m also going to try and keep up with more frequent posts here as well, as long as I can think of stuff to say! For now, back to the grindstone—let’s churn those words out!