Hoo boy… what a month.

Things have been pretty hectic here for much of October. We didn’t have a fully functioning kitchen for some time, far longer than anybody anticipated (we do now, although lacking a proper bench). Some of that time was due to the builders mucking us around, but everything after the flooring and walls was because of my partner’s absence. His mother was quite unwell, having been battling cancer for a year or so. Sadly, she went downhill quite suddenly near the end and passed away on the 14th.

On a different vein, I’m not currently writing To Target the Heart. I was going to try for the usual 20k, which I doubt I would’ve managed due to all of the above, but I’d an email pop up that asked one very simple question: When was the sequel to Dark One’s Mistress coming?

The thing was, I didn’t know the answer to that. Not then.

Since before I started on To Target the Heart, even whilst I was part way through In Pain and Blood and it’s novella An Unexpected Gift, Dark One’s Bride had been sitting there, half done. It was, originally, the first half of another book, and I’ve written so many scenes for it that just didn’t feel right for the story. In essence, I knew where I needed to start and where it had to end, but getting there was murky. Spits and spats cropped up whilst writing some of the later scenes for To Target the Heart, but I’d never turned my full attention to it. Until that email.

I’ve since completed four chapters and am halfway through a fifth. That leaves me with ten more chapters to either write from scratch or rewrite to match the new outline. Quite a few chapters have been scrapped or had sections repurposed in the process. I think having that break was actually good for it, it gave me time to fully consider just what sort of growth I wanted for Clara and Lucias.

Will I finish Dark One’s Bride by the end of the month? Probably not, if I’m realistic. But I’m taking November as a chance to finish whatever’s left. That means I’ll not being doing Nanowrimo. There’s just not 50k in this story and I can’t see myself adding more than a few hundred words to To Target the Heart alongside it as I’ve been doing some days (it will likely take the reins in the downtime between edits, though).

So, I’ve an answer to that question, now. Dark One’s Bride will definitely be out early 2019. I’m aiming for February, but that’ll depend on editing schedules.

It should be interesting.