Well, I didn’t get to start back on Eye of Darkness as quickly as I expected, but I did finally get back to work on it. I’m closing in on 60K words, and will break past it today, I expect. The story is progressing nicely, though I think when I’m done I’ll have to go back through and do two things: a) ensure that I’ve dropped appropriate “foreshadowings” for later events early enough, and b) tie up all lose threads. I found I had to do this a bit with The Elixir of Life as it is – in fact, this formed the bulk of my effort to beef up the work. I can’t imagine not having to do it for something I’ve composed so quickly.

I’ve also realized that I want to add an afterward to both The Lost Scrolls and The Elixir of Life: something that will highlight the factual elements in each story and offer readers an opportunity to explore further. It’ll probably be something similar to what I’ve composed on the pages here for the books. I have to discuss this with Ellechor first, of course, but I’ve encountered two authors who do so, and it’s interesting (to me, at least) to read that stuff.

James Rollins, one of my fav’s, does this at the end of his books, as does Terri Blackstock (just finished reading her book Predator the other day).  And I started doing something similar for the Jefferson’s Road series. I think it’ll be a nice tie-in for the Jonathan Munro stories.

Naturally, of course, as soon as I finished Elixir, I started plotting out the next adventure for Jon while in the shower. Meanwhile, I came up with an idea for an urban fantasy based here in Rochester. Basically, the story transforms the Rochester metro into a fantasy world for those who can see it (it involves the geography, history, and architecture of the city). There are two sides (good and evil, naturally), of which the good side is composed mostly of homeless people, and the bad side of those who are attempting to control the average citizens of Rochester, who remain blissfully ignorant of the magical war going on around them. Yes, it’s a total rip-off on Harry Potter’s Muggles, but that’s about as much influence as Rowling has had on the idea so far. The story will touch on the drug-use of the homeless (a device designed to keep the magical ones “burned out” so they can’t rise in defense of the city. Something like that), as well as the history of this city when it comes to spiritualism (The history of the Fox sisters starting the spiritualism craze back in the nineteenth century will give a partial justification as to “why here.”). Oh, and since there’s a large white tower and black tower downtown – that’s kind of important, too.

Of course, I can’t even start to work on it until I wrap up my current projects, so I guess I’d better get cracking. So many stories, so little time (that’s starting to be a theme for me).

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