The last time I updated this list, I thought I was finished writing my novel. Spoiler alert: I wasn't.

In October 2017, I had wrapped up the fourth draft of The Blood of Their Dreams and sent it around to subscribers on this list as a thank-you. But in the process of querying around for Blood, I wrote a synopsis...

And found out that there were several twists and turns my characters simply didn't need to take.

What if my main character was already a historian, and didn't need to fight to become one? What if she wasn't single-handedly responsible for the empire's antipathy towards the underclass, but war had already been brewing?

o no, I thought, now i have to fix this

This post contains spoilers for The Subtle Art of Empire (formerly known as The Blood of Their Dreams).

Have you read The Name of the Wind or its sequel, The Wise Man's Fear? I recently re-read both, and one thing that I admire about Patrick Rothfuss is his ability to write a compelling chapter. Even if the conflict in that chapter isn't essential to Kvothe's quest (and boy, does this often seem to be the case), by sustaining tension throughout, and inserting enough of a "hook" at the end, Rothfuss keeps the reader turning pages.

One reason my missives have been so rare these last few months is I was overwhelmed with election-related news and then election-related shock. I will confess that post-election, I've had serious doubts that the story I'm telling with this novel is still the story the world needs to hear.

And then it was December. I'm about halfway done with the scene-tightening exercise I described in the last missive: going through the novel to ensure each scene does the work of moving characters toward or away from their desired outcomes. It's awkward, painstaking work, but well worth it.

Another overdue missive! My Halloween costume ate up a lot of what would otherwise have been book-time, but it was nice to have an after-hours activity that didn't involve using my brain much (I highly recommend papercraft/pepakura as folding meditation!).

Exciting times: I've just wrapped the final chapter of the book! Current word count: 96,964. I'm super excited about the climactic scene and its emotional notes (very different notes from Draft 2)!

I apologize for the delay since my last update. Thank you for making room in your inbox for me!

Partially, I was embarrassed that the segment I've reported working on multiple times before--the dastardly 50-75% portion of the book--was still confounding me. But since I've now mostly wrapped that section, it finally feels like I'm making tangible progress on the book again.

So why did this section stymie for so long?