That feeling when the words just flow... Awesome!

So, I sat down tonight after work and typed so furiously and consistently that within a few hours, I had written over five thousand words! And in what I can only hope is a reasonably good addition to a story, no less! What an amazing feeling!

It's one of those scenes in the Winter Phenomenon that I had been pondering on for a week or two, just waiting for the right time and feeling, and it kind of just happened--despite the lure of Netflix and HBO and whatever else usually grabs hold of me when I need a break from coding and bug fixing. Unfortunately, this week is going to be exceptionally busy. I have to prepare presentations for tomorrow for a big meeting, another coding session with students the next day, and a completely different coding session on a different open source project the day after that. The whole week is shot, and I'll probably have to do another weekend of work to hit another 50-70 hour week of coding/presentation/meeting/calling marathon.

I'm not sure when I'll get a chance and a mood to write more about Alex and Suzanne and her scheming father, but I hope it's soon! Here's to hoping other writers out there found the time, energy and mood to do something similar this weekend. Writing binges are the best :D!

First draft complete on Goblin Rebellion

It's been a rough past four months for writing fiction. I had my dissertation defense back in December, and dozens of conference paper deadlines, presentations, job interviews, and dissertation proposal and defense writing projects spread across the past few months, and the deadlines coming up are even tighter and more frequent. This month alone, I have three papers due in the middle of the month.

Despite the pressure (or maybe because of it), I've managed to finish the first draft of the Goblin Rebellion. Today, while on flights back from California, I wrote the final two chapters, and I'm feeling pretty good about them. Total word count is just shy of 80,000, and it's likely to grow slightly over the next two weeks as I fill in setting and expand character interactions slightly.

I've talked to my editor, and everything should be set for a late February or early March release. Stay tuned!