It has been quite some time since I’ve posted an update, so I thought I’d sit down and catch up. It’s not that I’ve been overly busy, but laziness has a bit to do with it. I decided this year that I needed to do a better job of balancing work and life, so I took the Summer off from writing. Well, truth be told, there was a bit of Spring and Fall in there as well. I think that’s a schedule I’ll start keeping, especially as I have really taken to hiking and backpacking. There are a few multi-day trips I want to head out on this coming season, with the goal of hiking most of the trails through the Olympics within the next couple of years. There are a lot of them out there. But, that has little to do with a writing update. 🙂

I started on book 7 of the Tipping Point series and reached the eighty thousand plus word count yesterday. That will decrease somewhat as a part I wrote will now have to go into the next book. That amounts to some twenty thousand words, so I’m technically about two-thirds of the way through the rough draft. The timeline on these books keeps shrinking. Even though the draft is nearing completion, the story’s timeline has only advanced a few hours at best. At this point, I’m doubting the story will have progressed more than twelve hours once I’m done. That’s a lot happening in just a few hours of story. Which means that there will be an 8th book.

At the moment, I’m thinking of call this 7th book, Tipping Point: The Crossing. So, I guess you can pretty much figure out what this part of the story might entail. I won’t give any spoilers here…well, other than the title, I suppose. I have to say that it was difficult getting started back to writing once the warm weather vanished. Writing these tales just takes a lot out of me mentally. I push for about 2,500 words per weekday, which I’ve managed to stick with for the most part. These days, I can’t seem to pound on the keyboard much more than that. Much of it is that I have so much to keep track of storywise. The moving pieces are hard to remember, even though I have maps and pushpins, along with a desk calendar, to help me keep track of events and units. The other difficult thing for me is trying to find different ways to describe scenes. Much of what is taking place is the same, just with different names. The Ukrainian war is a prime example. Well, now I feel like I’m rambling and feeling sorry for myself. I do enjoy telling this story and can’t wait to find out how it ends. 🙂

I have no idea when I’ll be finished with this book, but I’m thinking it should be ready for editing close to the beginning of next year. Don’t hold me to it, though.

I hope your holiday season is magical and filled with joy.

John